Ukrainian Design at Design Miami: Doloni

Design Miami's Special Projects program has always been the place where the fair makes its most direct statements about what design means in the world beyond the gallery. This year, the most significant of those statements comes from STRONG & PRECIOUS ART FOUNDATION, a Ukrainian organization presenting Doloni: Objects of Presence — a collection of works across jewelry, ceramics, furniture, and textiles made by Ukrainian designers and craftspeople.

The title is precise. Doloni — meadows in Ukrainian — evokes the landscape of a country that has been under sustained attack since 2022. Objects of Presence is a claim about what design can do in that context: not escape it, not transcend it, but be present within it. The work is made in Ukraine, by Ukrainians, and it carries that fact with it.

The presentation spans four disciplines: jewelry, ceramics, furniture, and textiles. Each represents a different relationship between maker and material, between tradition and contemporary practice, between the intimate scale of a piece of jewelry and the domestic scale of a chair or a table. Together they make an argument about the breadth and depth of Ukrainian design culture — a culture that has been producing serious work for generations and that continues to do so under conditions that would stop most creative industries entirely.

Design Miami is a fair about objects. Doloni is a presentation about what objects mean when the context in which they are made is under threat. That is not a comfortable argument, and it is not meant to be. It is the most important thing at the fair this year.

Design Miami 2026 runs December 1-6 at Convention Center Drive & 19th Street, Miami Beach, concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach. STRONG & PRECIOUS ART FOUNDATION's Doloni: Objects of Presence is presented in the Special Projects program.