CAROLINE BURRAWAY

MOTHER, installation

Putin’s war funded with the revenue generated by Russian oil and gas exports continues to slowly grind on .  As Europe struggles to reduce it’s dependence on Russian energy, India and China have increased their buying which has offset most of the fall in Russian shipments to Europe. 

More than a continuation of policy by other means, war is a constellation of substances. This installation seeks to make visible how these substances intermingle, how they come together in their unique liquidity: blood, oil, cash. These are the liquid facts that form the war in Ukraine’s sordid circulatory system, pumping in and through the organs of the global order, leaving no-one unstained.

SONIASHNYK (1,000 SUNFLOWERS), installation

A land whose soil once fed the world now lies barren, field upon field churned and corrupted by the grind and spasm of war. The flowers too, are gone. The people too, are gone. The children too, are gone. Without their return, the Ukraine's long winter will never end.

Buried just below the surface though, is the promise of new life, of old life, the fallow truth of the soil, praying for its reanimation.The once vibrant sunflowers, a symbol of identity and peace now lie covered in plaster, their bleaching a signifier of its scorched land, its lost lives. 

Each stem a thousand dead and yet a glimpse of yellow beneath the cracks peeps through - a symbol of resistance, unity and hope, a nod to the resilience and bravery of the Ukrainian peoples.