Untitled 2022

This drawing by Alevtyna Kakhidze features an elephant statue wearing a hat of the world with a German flag, which our artist regards with curiosity. The sketch is simply made with a black pen, maybe a marker, on white paper. I can imagine Kakhidze thinking about how to use the simplest of marks to convey ideas, especially weighty ones, like war and peace. This drawing reminds me of the German artist Katharina Fritsch, who is mentioned in the writing below. The text seems to say that believing that not providing weapons will stop the war is like believing that an elephant holds up the earth. In some ways, Kakhidze uses the tradition of political cartooning to make a point about the war in Ukraine. Painting, drawing, it's all connected, right? We're all just trying to make sense of the world through marks and images, building on what others have done before us.