Olga Yarovaya

CAF awarded a grant to Olga Yarovaya for her project, “Warm Bodies: Cats and Survival in Wartime Ukraine.”

Olga Yarovaya’s visual art project examines how cats in wartime Ukraine have shifted from passive companions to indispensable actors in urban survival—and what that relationship reveals about care, mutual dependence, and animal rights under conditions of extreme crisis.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, cats have taken on roles that go beyond sentiment. In cities enduring blackouts and unheated homes, civilians describe cats as living sources of warmth and psychological continuity. Soldiers in trenches speak of them as sources of stability and heat. The project argues that the now-ubiquitous images of Ukrainians with cats depict not cuteness, but a relationship of reciprocal dependence critical to physical and psychological survival—one that complicates traditional human–animal hierarchies and raises urgent ethical questions about shared vulnerability and responsibility.

“Warm Bodies: Cats and Survival in Wartime Ukraine” takes the form of a collage series created from found Soviet and post-Soviet newspapers, magazines, and official printed matter, combined with hand-cut images of cats from archival and contemporary sources. Bureaucratic language, political slogans, and authoritarian visual codes are juxtaposed with scenes of intimate animal-human contact — exposing the absurdity of grand narratives when confronted with the most basic needs: warmth, touch, and survival.

Olga’s project culminates in a month-long, free public exhibition of 30–50 collages in Odesa, accompanied by monthly open studio sessions, two artist talks, and public discussions involving animal welfare activists, volunteer rescuers, zoo staff, and students. The aim is to allow visitors to recognize their own lived experience in the work and gain shared language for a form of survival that is deeply felt but rarely articulated—reframing animal rights not as an abstract commitment, but as a series of obligations that emerge most clearly in moments of crisis.

Olga Yarovaya is an Odesa-based Ukrainian artist, whose works are held in private collections in Ukraine, the USA, Germany, Italy, and France.