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ARTIST STATEMENT
Transforming death into life. Transformation of war into peace. This is what everyone who faces the horrors of war dreams of. Icons on Ammunition Boxes project was our shared dream of peace in Ukraine.
An icon can miraculously chronicle not only the events of two thousand years ago, but also the tragic vicissitudes of modern warfare unfolding before our eyes where hundreds of thousands are directly involved and millions are displaced.
It turned out that the icons’ classical contexts could be altered by painting them on fragments from military ammunition boxes rescued from the battle fields, thus expanding their symbols from the testament of Incarnation to the tragedy of modern war. A board on which a traditional icon is painted is incredibly similar to a lid or a bottom of a military ammunition box. This strange resemblance prompted us to paint the first icon of the project on such a board. We were pleasantly surprised and quite impressed by the reaction of the military and medical volunteers to our project, their enthusiasm, their willingness to bring those empty ammunition boxes from the battle fields. We consider them full participants of our project, a kind of co-authors.
What carried death, in the process of creative act began to convey what in the Ukrainian tradition is associated with life - an icon.
Military ammunition boxes are visually similar to coffins. Moreover, these boxes are usually like coffins, stored deep underground in military warehouses and arsenals. The war begins and, like in a Hollywood horror movie, those coffin boxes appear in the world of God, death jumps out from them, destroying everything in its path. But the final chapter in its destructive journey is written by the artist when the cartridges carrying death begin to radiate life.
One of the core metaphors of our project is that military ammunition boxes after the battle get a new life, acquire a new function, become icons - symbols of victory of life over death. Another important part of the project is volunteerism. Volunteering became an example of self-organization of the Ukrainians, a kind of test of humanity, a clear manifestation of grassroots democracy. Perhaps volunteering is what the modern Ukraine is most successful at, something we, as Ukrainians can be proud of and share with the world.
It seemed unethical for us to keep proceeds from sale of icon on ammunition boxes during the war, as if profiting from death and war. That's why we decided to turn our art project into a charitable initiative. We approached one of the founders of the Pirogov First Mobile Volunteer Hospital. Gennady Druzenko, with a proposal for cooperation, and since 2015 we have been providing financial support to this hospital - the largest non-governmental volunteer medical project. Our art initiative became one of the hospital’s main financial supporter, providing more than 90 percent of its financial needs.
Initially our project was an attempt to speak about modern war in the language of traditional art, and gradually it included discussions of the role of volunteering in the context of this war. The symbolic victory of life over death - its core idea - has become a reality.
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