40+ Artists Are Coming Together to Deface Russian Currency, Making It Valuable to Ukraine

Rubles for Ukraine is a charitable art project from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Amplify and Kairos

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February sparked an instant humanitarian crisis. Simultaneously, the Russian currency crashed to nearly zero. Now over 40 artists are defacing Russia’s paper money to help raise humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Rubles for Ukraine is a charitable art project, launched by a group of creatives and technologists from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Amplify, and Kairos. The project is repurposing over 100,000 Russian rubles as canvases for world-renowned artists to work on and sell.

“The response from the art community has been overwhelming. We started with a lofty goal of attracting 10 artists to the project, and we’d beaten that number in a day,” says Clemens Zlami, creative lead.

One hundred percent of the proceeds will go to charity, which is why the collection will be dropped as NFTs, which allow for the donations to be totally transparent.

But since real money is being defaced, the project also aims to live in the real world. Rubles for Ukraine is generating interest from high-profile art galleries—and the team hopes to host a “once-only” show of the entire collection. This exhibition would be the only time that the collection will be seen physically in its entirety, and NFT buyers will have the rights to claim their 1/1 matching physical artwork.

Artworks will be dropped as they arrive on social media, with sales slated to go live in July.