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Not for Sale: Ukraine’s Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka
César Corona is CEO of ExpoMuseum.com, an organization devoted to documenting World Expos and collaborating with partners and press to share knowledge about them. Below is the second installment in a photo series documenting Expo 2025 Osaka, with all images captured by Corona unless otherwise noted. For more of his work—including part one of this series—visit his author page.
At many Expos, it is disappointing to see national pavilions that function less as spaces of intercultural encounter and more as handicraft stores. Culture is used as a decorative backdrop, while the real goal is to sell souvenirs. This transactional approach trivializes national identity, turning it into merchandise instead of conveying deeper values or visions that could serve strategic national objectives. According to the Convention Relating to International Exhibitions, these events must not be of “an essentially commercial nature.” Their purpose is to inspire and educate rather than sell.
At Expo 2025 Osaka, Ukraine did exactly the opposite. Located within the Commons Pavilion C, the Ukraine Pavilion looks like a shop, but its objects are Not for Sale. Instead of promoting goods through culture, Ukraine promotes culture and values through the familiar language of goods. The emphasis is on what cannot be priced: freedom, dignity, sovereignty.
(Image: ©Expo 2025)
The pavilion resembles a store with its shelving, labeled objects, and clean design aesthetic, but it shifts the experience by excluding the possibility of buying. Items become prompts rather than commodities. Each object carries a barcode, which visitors can scan with a handheld device provided by the pavilion. The device plays short videos that deepen the explanation, linking the object to a value and showing how that value is threatened or defended in the context of the ongoing invasion.
As First Lady Olena Zelenska put it during Ukraine’s National Day at Expo 2025 Osaka, the pavilion “is dedicated precisely to values. It is called ‘Not For Sale,’ because values are not for sale, yet they are of immeasurable worth.”
Zelenska also warned that values everywhere face “serious tests,” from propaganda to online manipulation. She asked whether the world still has enough humanity, whether aggressors will be punished, and whether justice can be restored. Her speech reinforced the pavilion’s concept: what is displayed in Osaka is not merchandise, but a set of commitments.