It’s 2:44 am. An air siren cuts throughout the transparent evening sky over Kyiv and into my sleep. Middle pounding, I upward thrust away from bed in my seventh-floor room of the Resort Rus. Feeling like I’m on autopilot, I stroll down the steps to the bomb refuge. Chairs are covered up in orderly rows on this basement that used to be as soon as a fitness center. However just one aged guy in jogging pants with a trip cushion round his neck sits right here.
I quietly sit down subsequent to him and take a look at to determine the risk degree on my newly put in Kyiv Air Alert App. The air risk persists, however this night other people appear to have made up our minds that sleep is extra essential. I, too, unravel to go back to my room. I must be conscious for my lecture the following day on the Pinchuk Artwork Centre, a well known global museum for modern artwork in Kyiv.
The lecture is the rationale I’m in Kyiv. As a professor of tradition and era on the College of Southern Denmark, I used to be invited to discuss my analysis on drone artwork.
Drone artwork is set the usage of creative practices to discover, query and replicate on army drones. Being requested to provide a speak about this in Ukraine felt like a unprecedented and essential alternative – and I didn’t hesitate to mention sure.
Day after today, I’ve a while earlier than my communicate. I take a walk alongside the boulevards and the grand neoclassical structures within the centre of Kyiv. Individuals are out in cafes, bars and eating places. The bustling stores are crowded with consumers.
The place is the battle in this blue-sky day in Kyiv, one would possibly marvel.
However the battle is right here, continuously.
I spot teams of infantrymen in camouflage status in the street. A person on crutches, who sparsely crosses a highway junction. Statues encased in sandbags and boarded up – sheltered from air raids.
Statue in Ukraine boarded up and safe from air moves.
Creator equipped (no reuse)
Kyiv’s central sq., Maidan Sq., is awash with flags and portraits commemorating fallen infantrymen. The air is full of the consistent roar of turbines that supply electrical energy all the way through ongoing energy outages.
Within the night time, I after all stand within the lecture corridor of the Pinchuk Artwork Centre to provide my presentation. Younger other people, artwork scholars, curators, artists and older generations sit down within the target audience.
What can I inform them about drones – the ones for whom faraway war has turn out to be a day-to-day truth?
I speak about artwork, about army drones, about era, about loss. I focal point at the Ukrainian artist Lesia Khomenko, whose huge layout oil and acrylic works are on display within the museum.
Her portray “I’m a Bullet” (2024) is hanging, because it presentations the standpoint of a kamikaze drone earlier than it hits its goal.
Lesia Khomenko, I’m a Bullet (2024) With permission of Lesia Khomenko/The Pinchuk Artwork Centre.
Creator equipped (no reuse)
The portray is summary, and its white, expressive brush strokes provide you with an affect of an explosion. Khomenko’s artwork does now not constitute iconic pictures of battle; her paintings engages with questions of ways faraway sensing era dehumanises the topic and raises moral questions on how we, as an target audience, “watch” battle.
The seek for a non-iconic visible language of battle could also be shared via the Ukrainian filmmakers Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei.
Their contemporary paintings “Four Seasons” (2025) is a four-channel movie that presentations a small drone hitting a window in a lounge and creating a humming noise. Its manoeuvres echo Ukrainian youths practicing drone piloting at house to arrange for imaginable conscription.
Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei, 4 Seasons (2025). With permission of the artists.
After my lecture, a girl who sat within the entrance row and eagerly took notes approached me: “My son was killed by a Russian drone strike”. We have a look at every different in silence. I attempt to in finding phrases. She offers me a slight smile and says: “Thank you for coming to Kyiv. Engaging with art can be a lifeline”. After which she rapidly leaves the room.
Staying attached to lifestyles
All the way through my time in Kyiv, in my conversations with the artists, curators and other people I meet, I’m advised over and over how developing or attractive with artwork builds resilience – how artwork is helping other people get via disaster and the way artwork is helping communities keep attached to lifestyles.
The sold-out opera homes, live performance halls and theatres are evidence of that. And even if museums have had to give protection to a part of their collections in shelters, they’re open, and other people flock to the shows.
On my departure day, I sit down at the early morning educate to Warsaw – 16 hours forward, no flights in or out of Kyiv at the present time. Throughout the educate window, birch bushes move in a blur, as we traverse snow-covered fields and quiet villages.
All the way through the previous few days, the battle got here nearer to me than ever. It’s as although I will be able to really feel it in my frame, even if I’ve simplest been in Kyiv for 72 hours.
I’ve the privilege of returning to a spot of peace. Others don’t.
The battle does now not forestall on the border – it touches all people in tactics observed and unseen. Within the areas of artwork and tradition, we will be able to pause, replicate, and cling in our minds the lives and tales that call for to be remembered.
This newsletter used to be commissioned as a part of a partnership between Videnskab.dk and The Dialog.
