From 8 to 27 October 2026, Barcelona will host the exhibition “Bucha Blackboard”, whose central exhibit will be a real school blackboard from Bucha. After the city was liberated, 12-year-old Ivan wrote in chalk on it what he witnessed during the Russian occupation, the organisers say.
The exhibition will be presented by Centro Cultural Ucraniano (CCU), with the support of Ajuntament de Barcelona, at the CC Parc Sandaru cultural centre. The curator is Kateryna Pidhaina.
The exhibition’s central object is a school blackboard measuring 210 × 105 cm, which survived the Russian occupation of Bucha.
After the city was liberated, 12-year-old Ivan wrote in chalk about what he saw during the occupation: how Russian troops took over his school, how they shelled Irpin from there, and how they killed people in Bucha.
The blackboard was taken out of Ukraine by American journalist, documentary filmmaker and media artist Matt Danzico (Matt Danzico). His practice combines documentary film, journalism, photography and visual storytelling. Danzico has worked with the BBC, founded and led NBC’s Left Field documentary studio, and now runs Danzico Studios.
While working in Ukraine, he documented the consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion and became one of the initiators of The Bucha Blackboard project.
Today, the blackboard is in Westminster in London, from where it will be transported to Barcelona in October.
The exhibition opening in Barcelona will be dedicated to the experiences of Ukrainian children whose lives have been changed by the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The exhibition space will evoke an abandoned classroom — a place people seem to have stepped out of briefly, expecting to return. But they did not.
In addition to the blackboard itself bearing Ivan’s testimony, the exhibition will include explanatory materials and a translation of his text into Catalan and Spanish, a documentary film about Ivan, his family and the story of the blackboard, as well as works by Ukrainian visual artist Alina Zamanova.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Zamanova’s artistic practice has focused on themes of war, memory, loss and vulnerability. A special place in her work is given to the experiences of Ukrainian children whose childhoods have been radically altered by the war. Her works have been shown in Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and the United States, including at the Saatchi Gallery, Max Hetzler Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy.
About Centro Cultural Ucraniano
Centro Cultural Ucraniano (CCU) is a Ukrainian cultural association in Barcelona that works to present contemporary Ukrainian culture in Spain and integrate it into the European cultural context. CCU organises exhibitions, film screenings, music, literary and interdisciplinary projects, creating a space for dialogue between Ukrainian artists, cultural figures and European audiences. A separate strand of the association’s work is projects that, through art, documentary testimony and cultural diplomacy, tell the story of contemporary Ukraine and the experiences of Ukrainians during Russia’s war.