For the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I wanted to illuminate Ukraine’s perseverance and spirit by creating a composite of a historical figure of St. Olga, Ukraine’s first woman leader and the mythological creature from Slavic folklore known as the sirin, a bird that possesses a woman’s head.While St. Olga was a controversial figure, I couldn't help but empathize the depths that a woman could go through to avenge her wounded heart. Her story of vengeance against an opposing tribe that murdered her husband was by all accounts incendiary.
The sirin, commonly viewed as a destructive figure calling one to their destruction, in my research I have found tellings where the sirin’s song is said to have the power to stop wars.Here is a visual alchemy of recasting these polarizing figures in recreating an archetype that is an embodiment of hope, healing and determination to recover from loss and rebuild anew.
Though wounded, she is still able to keep soaring, the drops of blood a somber reminder of the human toll of this devastating conflict.
100% of proceeds of all print sales go to Ukrainian humanitarian relief efforts.
so I’ll let you be me. the familiar has stopped. stillness is no longer an option. death falls on us like a damned season of hell. snow on open wounds, ash flowers, shelled cities for a runway. we run. you may know the eerie quietness at night but not the rumbling noise and fire in the dark sky close enough for the deaf to hear it. we run and the blood-dust of our fathers’ land stick to our shoes. mothers and children are we, and my thoughts alone are a doorway to a measure of peace, the peace that reminds us that only fear is worse than death. my words are the mind of the world open to love. a poem is not a bomb, a poem is not a circus of evil. a poem is you and I when the bridge we cross from opposite directions disappears behind us.
The last words of Aaron Bushnell before he set fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington - Free Palestine.
The original scene is true: capture photo from video shows #AaronBushnell sets fire while a policeman is pointing a gun at his burning body!! Cop went for gun instead of an extinguisher.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all…Free Palestine.” -Aaron Bushnell
"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal"
-Aaron Bushnell
Shortly before his final act in this world, Bushnell posted the following message on #Facebook: "Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' "The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."
RIP Aaron Bushnell.. He decided to be a free man and not to be complicit in #GazaGenocide.. His last words were (Free #Palestine).
Photo credit: SOURCE: Krime Krime (@krime_1) / X (twitter.com)