Visualizing the Crime: The 'Empty Beds' Installation in NYC
Project: Global Advocacy | Location: Manhattan | Scale: 100ft Installation
[As Featured in The New York Times]
On October 29th, in the heart of Manhattan, Bird of Light Foundation launched a high-visibility advocacy campaign to expose one of the war's most systemic atrocities: the abduction of 19,546 Ukrainian children.
Partnering with renowned photographer Phil Buehler, we unveiled "Empty Beds"—a striking 100-foot public art installation in New York’s "Little Ukraine."
The Strategy: Making the Invisible Visible Russia’s campaign of forced deportation relies on silence and erasure. Our goal was to break that silence in a location that cannot be ignored.
Visual Evidence: The mural does not show the violence directly; it shows the void. It features high-resolution images of the empty beds left behind by children who were captured, detained, and subjected to "re-education" camps.
Systemic Erasure: The installation educates the American public on the calculated nature of these crimes—the changing of names, the banning of the Ukrainian language, and the forced issuance of Russian passports.
Witness Testimony: Rostyslav’s Story The installation anchors the statistics in human reality through the story of Rostyslav, a 17-year-old survivor from the Kherson region.
Resistance: Rostyslav was tortured for refusing to accept a Russian passport or renounce his citizenship.
Voice: having escaped back to Ukraine, Rostyslav has since testified before the U.S. Congress. His story, featured in the installation, serves as living proof of the resilience of Ukraine's youth.
Strategic Alignment This project was not executed in a vacuum. It was designed to support the President of Ukraine’s "Bring Kids Back UA" initiative, ensuring our NGO work aligns with national strategic goals. We executed this in coalition with Save Ukraine and the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, unifying the diaspora and the humanitarian sector under one message.
Until November 30th, New Yorkers will confront the reality that thousands of beds remain empty—and the fight to fill them continues.
