Untitled 2022

Alevtyna Kakhidze made this untitled drawing with pen and colored pencil on March 1st, 2022. It’s a map of sorts. I wonder what it was like for Kakhidze to make this piece. The tanks are drawn so simply. Like a child’s drawing, but also a diagram. A diagram of something terrible. The yellow lines connecting the tanks to Kyiv remind me of a child’s game. Connect the dots. But the stakes are so high. And then the little house, with a person standing in front of it. This feels so personal. Like a memory. It’s amazing how much information and emotion can be conveyed with just a few lines. It makes me think about other artists who have used simple means to express complex ideas like Faith Ringgold, or Rose Wylie. We are all in conversation with each other, working with whatever we have at hand to make sense of the world.