Eerie still life paintings - echoes of everyday, frozen in a macabre stillness the moment time stopped when Russian bombs rained down on Ukraine’s residential dwellings in the liberated towns of Irpin, Borodianka and Kharkiv in the early months of 2022.
What Remains…
Eerie still life paintings in shades of Burnt Sienna. Echoes of everyday, frozen in a macabre stillness the moment time stopped when Russian bombs rained down on Ukraine’s residential dwellings in the liberated towns of Irpin, Borodianka and Kharkiv in the early months of 2022.
Familiar things in kitchens where we gather and bedrooms where we dream. Baby cribs and cracked clocks. Charred cameras with tender family photos now faded as the memories of a world before war. A table still holds food left uneaten. What were they cooking that last day of normal?
Lives led, now put on hold. Or extinguished. Precious mementoes reduced to ash. Twisted metal, empty chairs, melted microwaves. Too painful to ponder what the power of these weapons of destruction does to human flesh at the point of impact.
Civilian things. Not the stuff of combatants. Humanity’s hopes, dreams, loves – in conflict, merely termed ‘collateral damage’. Broken glass becomes a metaphor for shattered lives. Fragmented remnants of war’s legacy.
Exquisite light kisses the scorched palette holding ethereal scenes reminiscent of fine art. Abstract, impressionistic patterns. Death's ballet is performed on singed, peeling wallpaper. Haunting yet disturbingly beautiful.
A popular cat café is in ruins, once the scene of camaraderie and conversation over cappuccinos. A collapsed building holds images of sunflowers, the unofficial national symbol of peace in Ukraine which has been used worldwide to show support since the invasion. In 1996 sunflowers were planted by Ukrainian, Russian and U.S. defense ministers in a ceremony at a missile base commemorating Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons.
Survivors visit in bittersweet homecomings to pick through the pieces of their former reality, saved from the bombardment by fickle destiny.
Others will never return.