Untitled 2022

Curator: This arresting drawing, simply titled "Untitled," comes to us from Alevtyna Kakhidze and dates to 2022. It’s created with ink on paper, resembling something of a personal journal entry rendered in a deliberately raw style. What's your immediate reaction? Editor: It strikes me as a stark visual scream. The almost childlike figures, juxtaposed with these aggressive bursts of red ink, it evokes a powerful feeling of vulnerability and violation. The overall visual grammar really amplifies the sense of immediacy, like a raw news dispatch. Curator: Indeed. It's a difficult work. The scene, seemingly split into two zones labeled “Ukraine” and “Russia”, visualizes an active conflict. On the Ukraine side we see "shopping center" clearly lettered, a scene that I imagine alludes to a direct and disturbing reality, an actual event of violence. There's even the artist's handwritten notation reflecting on the unfolding situation: "Well, if they travel back and forth out of Ukraine, then the war isn’t so bad THEN IS IT?" These elements place the drawing squarely within a lineage of activist art responding to geopolitical conflict. Editor: The figures themselves are potent symbols. There are so many bodies collapsing in this frenzied flurry. It conveys helplessness, a visceral understanding of victimhood and the obliteration of everyday safety that occurs when geopolitical conflicts enter domestic spaces. Those red bursts seem to carry a multitude of meanings, standing in for the explosive nature of the war. They aren’t just abstract shapes; they symbolize lost lives and lost futures. Curator: Considering Kakhidze’s established role within Ukrainian art as a voice often engaged with themes of displacement, political commentary, and societal anxieties, we can understand this drawing as more than just an isolated artwork. This is about recording the realities of disruption to civic infrastructures in her homeland through a particular lens. How is the conflict impacting civilians? Editor: Absolutely, and note that her work becomes a kind of urgent memorial. The simple lines, the starkness... they amplify the loss and the pain. It asks the viewer to remember, to not turn away from these lived realities that the news can sometimes sanitize. Even the phrase handwritten as annotation invites our own moral and empathetic questioning in an ongoing dialogue. Curator: This artwork reminds us of art's function as a critical witness, preserving narratives of human tragedy. It uses stark and raw imagery to speak truth to a crisis. Editor: I’m left considering what role this seemingly simple, but clearly potent symbolic drawing has in a world increasingly desensitized to violence displayed in mass media. The artist demands that we don't let these symbols become mundane.