KYIV.- The sculpture is made from letters that remained from the welcome sign of Liubymivka, a frontline village in the Kherson region. The village was occupied by Russian forces in March 2022 and later liberated by the Ukrainian army on October 3 of the same year. The sign, once a symbol of civic identity, was heavily damaged by artillery and close combat.
“We are developing our railway stations. Alongside launching useful services — from bookshops and children’s rooms to bakeries — we are filling them with cultural life: organising exhibitions, installing art pieces, transforming the space into a venue for film shoots and live music, a space that inspires faith and meaning. Oleksiy Sai’s installation Volya is about the resilience of the Ukrainian spirit and the iron character that resonates with every railway worker. This is already our second joint project with the PinchukArtCentre this year, and many more exciting collaborations lie ahead,” emphasised Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of Ukrzaliznytsia.
“We are proud to have a second collaboration with the Ukrainian railroads, bringing works PinchukArtCentre specifically commissioned to support Ukraine on an international stage, like at the WEF in Davos, back to large Ukrainian audiences. By presenting this specific work by Oleksiy Sai in the central station of Kyiv, it becomes a monument for all Ukrainians, a testament of their deep understanding that freedom and will are inherently connected,” commented Björn Geldhof, Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre.
The Volya sculpture was first presented to an international audience during the exhibition Your Country First — Win with Us, held at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2025. It was later shown at the Munich Security Conference and at the YES Conference, marking the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion. Now, it is available for everyone visiting the station to see.
The word Volya in Ukrainian holds a dual meaning — both “freedom” and “will.” This semantic duality reflects the Ukrainian soul. It emphasizes that freedom is not a passive state. It is a condition that can only be achieved and sustained through the exertion of will. These two concepts are ontologically intertwined. Freedom demands the will to fight, to endure, and to protect. It is through persistent determination that freedom becomes a lived reality.
The sculpture, in its form, references Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE, a seminal work of American pop art from the 1960s. Drawing on Indiana’s bold typographic style, Volya bridges the idealism of past decades and today’s geopolitical reality, transforming global symbols of peace, unity, and hope into a manifesto of resistance, endurance, and the pursuit of national self-determination.
Volya is the second artistic intervention implemented as part of the strategic partnership between the PinchukArtCentre and Ukrzaliznytsia, which aims to bring contemporary art into public spaces. In February 2025, the same location hosted Arrival, a video work by Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei.
