Untitled 2022

This drawing was made on April 16, 2022, by Alevtyna Kakhidze, probably with felt tip pens on paper. There’s a directness to the marks, the kind of unpretentious approach you see in someone who’s more interested in saying something than showing off their drawing skills. There’s a figure in the image who’s presenting a drawing within the drawing. The drawing shows a Javelin missile and some text listing how much it costs. The materiality of the drawing becomes part of the message: a handwritten protest against the cost of war. I’m interested in the phrase in the lower left ‘Alexei Navalny…has some proposals to world leaders’. It’s like the drawing is acting as a kind of proposal in itself. Kakhidze’s drawing has an urgency to it that reminds me of artists like Nancy Spero who used drawing as a form of political activism, a way to make their voice heard. Drawing becomes a form of speaking truth to power, a way to cut through the noise and say what needs to be said.