Ukrainian War Collages
- Someone Prays for You, online fundraising exhibition, 2022–2025
- We Lived Happily During the War, Cross Lane Projects, London, 2023
- And Quiet That Splinters the Winter, At Home Gallery, Šamorín, Slovakia, 2023
- Ukrainian War Collages, Taras Shevchenko Museum, Toronto, 2025
- The War that Changes Everything, Canadian Ukrainian Museum, Saskatoon, 2025
- The War Years, Chelsea College of Arts, London, 2026
From the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new reality occurred for people of Ukrainian heritage such as myself. Notions of sovereignty, democracy, and social responsibility suddenly took on a greater sense of urgency. As theorist Vincent Lloyd writes, “The inertia of the ordinary sweeps us along, muting all but the most mundane worries. But in moments of tragedy, of deep decision, of disruption, of evil, in moments when we step out of the pull of the ordinary, we understand that something is amiss in the world.” The feeling that something is amiss in the world has often informed my art practice, but it now affects me with a renewed sense of magnitude and purpose.
At first, I struggled to find ways to respond to the atrocities in Ukraine. In 2022, I began to work on a set of collages for the website Someone Prays for You, an initiative set up by Ukrainian Canadian artist Taras Polataiko to raise funds for the Ukrainian Civil Defence. These collages juxtapose images excised from old National Geographic magazines and WWII war journals with contemporary imagery from Ukraine. Unexpected links are invariably forged, producing an emotional — almost primordial — tug between revulsion and aesthetic appeal.
Slava Ukraini!
And Quiet That Splinters the Winter
This site-specific installation holds menace and beauty in a kind of cognitive dissonance. It is both a gesture of remembrance for those who have died in the war in Ukraine and a lament for the destruction of the natural environment that accompanies all wars. The title is from a poem by Anastasia Afanasieva, one of many contemporary Ukrainian writers exploring how — and if — poetry can respond to the Russian invasion of their country. Denise Hawrysio and John Wynne experimented together for a month in this former synagogue in Slovakia to ask the same question of art.
See John Wynne’s website for more information about this installation.
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