Beauty During Wartime: Ukrainian Artists Display Resilience and Faith
Jesus and the Mother of God from the Mariupol Iconostasis series. (Photo by Jillian Cheney)
NEW YORK — The work of five Ukrainian artists, whose art varies across artistic tradition and highlights the beauty of Ukraine and its people, is currently on view at the Sheen Center’s Janet Hennessey Dilenschneider Gallery in New York City.
The exhibition, “Beauty During Wartime and Before,” is meant to honor resilience and faith during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The focal point of the exhibition comprises 17 works from the “Icons on Ammo Boxes” project by Kyiv artists Sofia Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko.
Other works featured are from contemporary Ukrainian artists who create work in a variety of styles.
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Oleksiy Chekal is a printmaker and calligrapher who creates work for a variety of different faith traditions. His work, featuring the Virgin Mary, wraps around a column just outside the gallery.
Anna Ravliuc has seven works from her “Little Angels” series. The angels, only some of whom have wings, are painted in bright primary colors and adorned with gold. The canvases are enhanced with geometric patterns in the style of “vyshyvanka,” embroidered clothes that are fundamental to Ukrainian culture. The angels wear vyshyvankas themselves.
Yurii Khymych was a Kyiv artist whose work, spanning decades of the 20th century, depicts colorful renditions of Ukrainian landscapes and architecture. His work ranges from intricate to more abstract, at times using bright color and wobbly lines to recreate notable buildings in Ukraine that then appear to be in motion. Khymych’s paintings reflect a vibrant country, whether in their detail or movement.
Artwork by Anna Ravliuc and Yurii Khymych. (Photo by Jillian Cheney)
His featured painting, “Karvasary (Church of the Holy Cross),” depicts a centuries-old Orthodox church in the city of Kamyanets-Podolsk with soothing orange, green and blue.
The icons are still the highlight of the exhibit, occupying over half the gallery space. They depict biblical figures — Jesus and the Virgin Mary at the center, surrounded by archangels, Gospel authors and more — and Orthodox saints like Panteleimon, the patron of healing.
For the most part, the icons are painted in a traditional style, using rich colors and heavily shaded expressions as well as all of the regular identifiers in iconography. The archangels have wings and hold a thin, red staff; Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul all hold books. Each of the figures is adorned with a halo.
It’s where they differ from traditional iconography that the project takes on its unique, tragic meaning. Because of the sanctity of the figures depicted in this work, it has become fundamental that icons be painted on wood of great quality. That means it’s sturdy, even, unblemished and wholly intact.
As these icons are painted on the lids of ammunition boxes Russian soldiers left behind in Ukraine, they’re anything but great quality. The wood is porous, each surface made up of four to five small slats of wood held together. That helps to create small cracks in the would-be canvas, but in some the splits are even wider.
The lids are additionally pockmarked with holes and other dents. Rusted hinges that once served to hold the box together still hang at the edge of each piece, serving as a reminder of the horror these beautiful works originated in.
In traditional icons, the halos are painted in gold, adding an opulence meant to reflect the riches of heaven. In this series, the halos — except for Jesus’ — are loosely outlined with charcoal.
This lack of splendor gives the icons a much more reflective, even mournful, spirit.
These changes weren’t made to mock iconography or cast doubt on the sanctity of the figures, but rather to approach faith in the midst of suffering with a steadfast spirit.
Religious icons on display at New York’s Sheen Center. (Photo by Jillian Cheney)
Of the icons displayed, 11 are from the Mariupol Iconostasis series, made to commemorate Russia’s destruction of the coastal city in 2022. The siege of Mariupol lasted three weeks and ended in Russian occupation.
Russia remains in control to this day. In June 2022, it was reported that 90% of residential buildings and 60% of private homes were damaged or destroyed. Residents who survived and remain in the city describe dangerous living conditions, meager provisions and brainwashing propaganda in schools one year after the initial siege.
The Mariupol Iconostasis are the largest icons on display, similarly painted on the lids of ammunition cases. At the bottom of each board, the portrait is overlaid with the charred and devastated cityscape of Mariupol, from its shipyards to its buildings.
The Mariupol works differ from others in the series. In comparison, they’re particularly somber. All still contain the trademarks of the ammo case, however, proclaiming the violence that has befallen Ukraine and the resilience its people there show despite their suffering.
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Jillian Cheney is Religion Unplugged’s Senior Culture Correspondent. She writes about film, TV, music, art, books and more. Find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.