Background
As Ukraine marks its 35th year of independence, the touring War Up Close virtual reality museum arrives in Kelowna, British Columbia. The project, run by the VR Museum of War in Ukraine, has been capturing the destruction caused by Russia's invasion in 360-degree panoramic photography since 2022, and has previously exhibited across North America and Europe.
The Kelowna exhibition
The exhibition runs for a single day, 22 August 2026, at the Rotary Centre for the Arts, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free, with visitors encouraged to donate towards the continued touring of the exhibition.
What visitors see
Seated visitors put on standalone VR headsets and are placed inside real locations across Ukraine, surrounded by destroyed homes, streets and cities. The material combines 360-degree panoramic stills with drone footage of damaged schools, museums and hospitals. Organisers stress that the imagery deliberately excludes bodies and blood, and that it is presented as factual visual evidence rather than artistic interpretation — recorded so that the destruction can later support accountability for crimes against civilians. Alongside the headsets, aerial footage is projected at large scale for visitors waiting their turn.
The Children's Art Showcase
The VR museum is shown with the Sunflower Dreams Project, a display of artwork by children displaced from Eastern and Southern Ukraine who now live as refugees in Lviv. The programme was inspired by Nataliia Pavliuk, an art lecturer at Lviv Polytechnic University, and her daughter Yustyna, as a way of helping traumatised children process loss through making art. The paintings are exhibited on easels among the VR stations.
Capture and delivery
The exhibition is delivered on standalone consumer VR headsets liveried with the project's own branding, with one visitor per headset. The 360-degree material is captured in the field by the museum's own photographers; co-founder Mykola Omelchenko, one of the project's lead documentarians, has worked with professional-grade panoramic equipment including the Insta360 Titan.
