Graphics 17. Mari u Polia
Graphite on paper, 50x50 cm, 2024 | Unframed
“Mari u Polia” depicts my childhood home — Mariupol, a city once nearly unknown to the world, until it gained tragic global recognition during the war.
Do we truly remember our childhood — the events, emotions, and brightness of those early years? Time can blur even the most vivid memories.
Am I talking about childhood?
“Mari u Polia” continues a three-work series shaped by the artist’s lived experience of war and displacement.
Created during a period of creative silence, the drawing uses minimal gesture and boundaryless composition to symbolize the collapse of personal and psychological borders under violent pressure.
Created during a period of creative silence, the drawing uses minimal gesture and boundaryless composition to symbolize the collapse of personal and psychological borders under violent pressure.
The piece refers to Mariupol, the artist’s childhood home — a city whose devastation briefly occupied global attention.
Yet the work raises a deeper question: How long can a distant society sustain empathy for a tragedy that is not its own? Public grief, however sincere, is often temporary; routine returns, emotional intensity fades, and the world moves on.
The phrase “Am I talking about childhood?” becomes a layered inquiry — not only about fading personal memories, but also about the fragile, short-lived nature of collective compassion.
Through disciplined minimalism, the work confronts the tension between private loss and a world that witnesses, reacts, and eventually forgets.
