"Art allows you to process and name our feelings, and find other people who feel it and process it." "In every war, there was artistic life," says curator and art historian Monika Fabijanska, "either underground or above ground, wherever possible." Creating is an essential outlet. Surrounded by shelling and death, the Ukrainian women make artworks. They show the aftermath of rapes - painful drawings of private parts, bloodied by aggression a mother and small children at the foot of a filthy basement staircase the forbidding image of a psychiatric hospital. Other artists in the exhibition "Women at War" make works about history, politics, war and the pain and toll of it. I can't live with her in Ukraine." Three times a day she'd had to run to the basement to hide from shelling: "You're filled with fear."īut with help from technology, she and Max were able to make the fear almost bearable. I have a small daughter and I am very responsible for her. She'd felt she had to leave her country, even though it meant being away from Max. Lesia spoke to NPR a day before she flew from New York back to Ukraine, for just a week-long visit. "I wonder if I can still recognize him," she says. His expression is serious - determined and focused. I have heard that North Face is much cheaper to buy in the US than the UK & was wondering if anyone knew of an outlet store or similar that offers discount. He stands as straight as possible, saluting. "Now, he is totally in military uniform" she says. But during those months, she noticed changes in Max. Over the months of separation, he regularly sent her selfies.
When Max entered the army, Lesia was able to leave the country. He'd been a musician and media artist before the war. Over 500 variations of just about everything from The North Face, from casual to extreme. Lesia Khomenko's portrait of her new husband Max shows one of the many Ukrainian men drafted to fight against the Russians. The powerful, haunting works prove that art is not just about pretty pictures.
The women are activists as well as artists, and are responding in paint, photographs and videos to the Russian invasion, and earlier conflicts over the annexation of Crimea. Stories of war are being told now by some of Ukraine's leading female artists at New York's Fridman Gallery, as well as a gallery in Kyiv.
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