A cry of rage from Ukrainian artists

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A cry of rage from Ukrainian artists

CHICAGO — What does art have to do with war? A lot, in fact. It is an effective arena to carry it out, through intentional cultural destruction like that perpetrated by the Taliban when they blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, by the Nazis when they looted Jewish collections during the Second World War. world, by the British when they plundered Jewish collections during the Second World War. they sacked the city of Benin in 1897. More recent acts of this type include hundreds of Ukrainian heritage sites damaged by Russian missiles and dozens, if not hundreds, of places in Gaza destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.

In times of war, violence falls on art. But art can also be a counterattack, a means by which a victimized population defends itself. In Women at war: 12 Ukrainian artistscurrently on view at the Chicago Cultural Center, opposition takes the form of experimental film, classic photojournalism, a miniature landscape painting, and even a conceptual stone sculpture. The exhibition, first mounted by independent curator Monika Fabijanska in New York, presents the artworks as a cry of rage, a way to fund the opposition effort, to share stories of popular resistance and to record the most horrible of realities. Everything in Women at war this has been done since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea; some works postdate the large-scale invasion that began in 2022. The creators are four generations of female artists born in Ukraine, and many of them became refugees over the past two years. Rarely have the brief biographical information on the wall labels – born here, lived there – moved me so much. The exhibition’s only historical inclusion – a popular, feminist sketch by Alla Horska that served as the basis for a large outdoor mosaic on a Mariupol building that survived the bombings – resonates with a heartbreaking matrilineal echo of death of the artist in 1970 in the hands of the artist. of the KGB.

Much of the artwork in Women at war is very difficult to watch. Most nightmarish are nine heavily marked ballpoint pen and watercolor images by Vlada Ralko, part of Lviv newspaperan ongoing series published daily on Instagram and which currently has around 500 copies. Bodies are mutilated by missiles and sickles, terrifying beasts roam, death is everywhere. Almost as brutal are Dana Kavelina’s pencil drawings of phallic war machines, immense soldiers, the women they raped, and the children born from those crimes. Traced on crumpled and torn paper, the sketches are drained of color, except for the red lines marking the bloody bonds that unite their characters through violent copulation, forced silence and cruel fatherhood. Kavelina’s “Letter to a Dove,” a 20-minute video poem, channels the sadistic surrealism of life in a war zone through a dizzying montage of cut-paper animations, handheld footage of recent combat, performances of suffocating body art and archival footage. of industrial Donbass is retreating, as if everything could be undone.

Beauty and charm are also there, but in a deceptive way. Three tiny watercolor landscapes by Anna Scherbyna, each measuring just a few centimeters in diameter, couldn’t be more beautiful. But a closer look reveals that under blue skies and amid lush greenery lie ruined hospitals and a roofless airport, sights seen when the artist traveled through the Luhansk and Luhansk regions. Donetsk as part of a human rights monitoring mission. Alevtina Kakhidze’s whimsical illustrations tell the story of Strawberry Andreevna, a pensioner living in Donbass and selling fruits and flowers at the local market. The style is quirky and naive, but the story is not: the main character is the artist’s mother, who is given a nickname to protect her identity as she struggles to stay alive in a territory occupied by separatists. Individual panels recount his daily trips to the cemetery outside of town, the only place with cell reception to call his daughter; the checkpoints she must pass to get to and from her garden; the cellar where she hides while a neighbor is killed; and finally her death, following a cardiac arrest, while trying to cross the demarcation line to recover her pension.

Strange artwork also predominates. Zhanna Kadyrova presents what looks like a large, round, partially sliced ​​loaf of bread, but it is actually a smooth river stone expertly carved by her partner Denis Ruban. Many such rocks were collected by the duo after they moved to a remote Carpathian village to escape the bombing of kyiv. Titled “Palianytsia” after the famous Ukrainian bread mispronounced by the Russians – a name given more recently to the country’s latest strategic weapon, a broad-winged cruise missile – all profits from the sale go directly to the war effort. Olia Fedorova also creates lookalikes, five-foot-tall white paper sculptures in the shape of anti-tank hedgehogs, steel structures commonly deployed as a line of defense against light and medium military vehicles. She photographs them in a quiet, snowy field, their minimalist elegance their only strength.

Is this the art these artists would be making if Russia had never started its war against Ukraine? Probably not. Artists produce the work they need, even in times of war. It’s the job of the rest of us to see it.

Women at war: 12 Ukrainian artists continues at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 East Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois) through December 8. The exhibition was curated by Monika Fabijanska.

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