Anna Vereshchaka had her winter calendar packed with appointments and plans. Things were going well for this young artist from Kyiv. Theirs was a promising routine that was suddenly interrupted on February 20 when Russia unexpectedly invaded Ukraine. Anna's life, which until then had been a placid blue, was dyed red. The outbreak of the war also changed her calendar, which became a work of art, Point in Time. Monologue.
It is one of the proposals that 13 Ukrainian artists have created to atone for the war and that yesterday landed in Barcelona at the hands of the Imaginart gallery on Diagonal Avenue. Art that reflects pain, rage and death in the most varied forms. For Maxim Veteris, all that suffering is summed up in a coloring book like the ones children use. It's called There will be not good pictures and inside there are no illustrations of Donald Duck or the Disney princesses, but horrible drawings that follow the trail of blood left by this fight that has lasted five months.
Jennifer Anorue was studying for a master's degree at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv when the bombs began to fall. She went to live in Dublin. Every day she talks to her boyfriend via video conference. That is the image that she has taken to the artistic plane, the pixelated face of the man she loves, who has stayed in Ukraine, because men between 18 and 60 years old have been recruited and cannot leave the country.
Oleksii Shcherbak is 25 but has obtained special permission to leave Ukraine and participate in the opening of the exhibition. He is the only man from this group of artists who has been able to travel to Barcelona to show his work in person, Holly , an oil on canvas that wants to convey the devastating effect that war has on children through the image of a creature that it has been forced to grow in a few weeks.
Aglaya Nogina, curator of the exhibition - which has adopted the generic title of Vereshchaka's work Point in Time. Monologue - poses a reflection on the loss of home. Nogina also left Ukraine. She settled in Düsseldorf with her mother and wonders if she will feel at home in Germany again, which she has transferred to an oil on canvas where she has painted roots like the ones she hopes to be able to put down in the new her home.
Many times war has been a source of inspiration for art and these young Ukrainian artists have also succumbed to its horror as an artistic motif. Sofia Golubeva was working on a work critical of capitalism when the invasion took place. In that painting, Running, people were seen running madly in the rush of daily tasks. Now Running has become a square where people run for another reason, to flee from war. It is another of the works in the Imaginart gallery exhibition, which will be on display until August 26.
