Sunday, September 06, 2009

Feeling Talented? Painting with Sand

Via Edge of the American West, the winning contestant in Ukraine's Got Talent. The article gives some context to the painting:

What she depicts is love and war, set amidst the turmoil of The Great Patriotic War, or as we call it in America, WWII. Ukraine was probably the area most devastated in the war, even more than Germany. It was a conflict that saw nearly one in four Ukrainians killed. A population of almost 42 million lost between 8 and 11 million people, depending on which estimate one references. Ukraine represented almost 20 percent of all the causalities suffered during WWII. And that was after Stalin had killed millions during the manufactured famines before the war. It to this day touches every Ukrainian. That's the context of war memory that Kseniya reaches out to.

It's an amazing 8 minutes. Even more amazing is to reflect how much humans bring to their sensations, as we the viewer are constructing the art from some sand on a projection table.

1 comment:

George Buddy said...

Bill, nice post. Yes, Ukraine has had one really bad problem through the centuries -- location, location, location.