After February 24, 2024, reports appeared on social networks that on that day a performance was held in the United States, in which Ukrainian soldiers were depicted as feces with human limbs. We checked whether such an event took place.
Reported, that on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the gallery of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) hosted an exhibition dedicated to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, “Glory to the Heroes” (sometimes called “Glory to the Heroes” on social networks). At the same time, the publications cite a poster of the proposed event and a video recording allegedly filmed in one of the halls. “Thematic performance in New York. The Ukrainian Armed Forces militants were presented in the form of a pile of shit with hands,” commented the video on the Telegram channel “Troika"(437,000 views at the time of writing this analysis").
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The viral 14-second video is not a stand-alone video, but a recording of a smartphone screen showing an Instagram story on MoMA’s profile. In the second second, an inscription with the date February 24, 2024 appears. It is indicated that the story was published 10 hours ago.
The exhibition announcement image is also a screenshot of an Instagram story, which does not show the account name. Instead, the cover of the This Week stories album is shown. According to an announcement allegedly published six days before the screenshot was taken, a Heroiam Slava exhibition was planned at the MoMA PS1 gallery with the following description: “An exhibition-performance in memory of the heroes of Ukraine who bravely fought for freedom.” Also in the stories there was allegedly a link to purchase tickets to the event.
“Verified” found the earliest posts with viral photos and videos in two Telegram channels at once: “Shkvarka News" (22,000 views) and "Shkvarka 2.0"(11,000). There, publications appeared on February 27 at 16:26 Moscow time, while the files, judging by the metadata, were uploaded to the platform a couple of hours earlier - at 13:57. The posts from both channels clarified that the news was sent by an anonymous subscriber and that in fact feces were not shown at the exhibition: “As part of the performance, the hands of the “heroes” were digging in a pile of earth (very similar to shit). They are artists, that’s how they see it.” Previously, the channels “Shkvarka News” and “Shkvarka 2.0” repeatedly became sources of distribution of fabricated photos and videos, also allegedly sent by anonymous readers.
"Verified" examined the sites Museum of Modern Art in New York and its exhibition space MoMA PS1, but did not find any mention of an event called Heroiam Slava. It is also absent in calendar exhibitions for February 24, 2024. Regarding Instagram MoMA, it is no longer possible to check the presence of stories there, since more than 24 hours have passed (in the album This Week old publications are also deleted). Also, about the performance didn't write no American media.
Fact checkers from the Georgian project “Myth Detector” contacted with the Museum of Modern Art, and its press service denies that MoMA PS1 hosted the Heroiam Slava exhibition. On February 24, 2024, several events were organized in this art space, but none of them were dedicated to the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
As for the exhibit that was used in the viral story, it has nothing to do with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Using a reverse image search, Verified discovered that this performance called “New Flesh”, and its author is the artist William Cobbing. Back in September 2023 he shared behind-the-scenes photos from filming and wrote, that the video is being shown at the UK's AirSpace Gallery as part of the Stoke Contemporary Ceramics Festival. Full minute video by the author published on their social networks in early October last year.
Cobbing's exhibition was called Social Substance and passed in the fall of 2023. According to the exhibition description, the artist “presented a series of videos, sculptures and performances exploring the playful and ambiguous interactions between people embedded in mounds of shapeless clay.” On the YouTube channel of the AirSpace gallery published a short tour of the exhibition.
Thus, on February 24, 2024, the Museum of Modern Art in New York did not hold an event in which Ukrainian soldiers were presented as a pile of feces. The attackers forged publications on behalf of MoMA, using footage from last year's exhibition, which was held in the UK as part of a ceramics festival. She also had nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.
Cover photo: video screenshot @WilliamCobbing (X)
- The Guardian. British Ceramics Biennial 2023 review – 50 shades of clay from high-flying potters
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