Untitled 2022

Alevtyna Kakhidze made this drawing on paper in Kyiv. The black lines have a real immediacy, a kind of urgent, raw quality. You can feel the artist’s hand moving quickly, almost like a seismograph registering tremors of thought and feeling. The drawing has this incredible tension between text and image. The words are so direct, a call for peace and unarmed occupation, yet the figures and buildings are rendered with a kind of childlike simplicity. Look at the figure on the left, with ‘Western Philosophy’ scrawled on what look like wings – there's a touch of irony there, right? It is in simple contrast to the buildings on the right, daubed with red, looking as though they have suffered a disaster. Kakhidze is an Ukranian artist addressing really important issues, but doing it with a light touch, and not being afraid to incorporate text and cartoonish imagery. You can see echoes of artists like William Kentridge, in how she combines the personal and the political with such directness. Art can be a way of making complex feelings visible, and this drawing does that so powerfully.