An exhibition of drawings of Polish children who lived during the Second World War and Ukrainian children suffering from war in their country reveals that an armed conflict is always the same for the little ones, at any time and place.
“The way children perceive war, what they feel, what they convey with their drawings (…) is quite similar,” exhibition curator Dorota Sadowska told AFP.
“What you see is suffering, pure and simple,” he added.
The outdoor exhibition of hundreds of drawings, displayed in various Polish cities and other countries, is a joint effort between Poland and Ukraine.
The colorful art of Ukrainian children living the Russian invasion of their country, made with markers, crayons or even digital tools, comes from the collection of the “Mom, I see war” portal.
The site collected thousands of drawings to create a digital photo collage for an NFT auction. The proceeds will be used to help children affected by war.
The Polish part of the exhibition, usually in pencil on paper, includes drawings made in 1946 for a national competition. They have been kept in the Central Archive of Modern Registers in Warsaw.
Sadowska said the goal is for “the world to watch children and hear what children say and hear”.
“Perhaps then he will see that in times of war, every child is a victim. And it will make adults think about what can be done to change it,” he added.
Among the drawings are tanks, corpses, planes on fire, buildings with holes in them, armed soldiers, torture and tears.
“Raise awareness”
The topic is difficult to square with the aesthetics of children’s art, Sadowska commented.
“A small child can draw the sun, the flowers, a smiling child, his family. Or the clouds, the trees, the kittens, the puppies, not the gallows or the corpses,” he told AFP.
“The world of children and the world at war are two separate worlds,” he added.
Particularly shocking is the work of 14-year-old Valeria from the settlement of Hlevakha near Kyiv.
It shows a vibrant field of sunflowers, a national emblem of Ukraine, with bright yellows and greens, and in the middle, a medley of corpses with blood dripping from their heads, arms and torsos.
Marina, 34, walks by with a stroller and stops to watch. She says she left her “with tears in her eyes because I am from Ukraine”.
“I think it’s a good idea, to create awareness again,” the woman, a mother of two, from the town of Jerson told AFP.
Wanda Sieminska, a pensioner from Warsaw who visited the exhibition, noted that the two series of drawings are similar despite the differences in time, place and tools used.
“The theme is the same: the tragedy of children in wartime,” the 85-year-old woman told AFP.
–
