In an unexpected twist, Ukraine's year-old revolution spilled into street art, transforming some bleak old buildings into colorful memories of people's uprising - and not just in Kyiv.
One of the first EuroMaidan-inspired murals was painted in Varkala, India, by a Ukrainian street art duo Interesni Kazki. This duo made it to Huffington Post’s list of “25 contemporary street artists who are shaking up the way we see public art.” In January, Volodymyr Manzhos of Interesni Kazki, who was in India on a trip, painted a piece called “Time for Change” on a wall of a small house in Varkala.
The mural shows a hand clothed in traditional Ukrainian vyshyvanka, or embroidered shirt, holding an hourglass. The sand in it is yellow-and- blue, a reference to Ukraine’s national flag. Manzhos says that the hourglass symbolizes development and destruction. The artists says the painting means that “it is time to wake up” for the Ukrainians. The crane, which also features in the mural, is a symbol of homeland. It fights a dangerous snake which holds a police baton, a clear reference to the Maidan uprising, where people faced off the police for months in the cold.
Nine months after the first mural, Interesni Kazki’s Manzhos painted the second piece of the “Time of Change” diptych in Kyiv. He finished it at the end of October. Manzhos says it took him 35 days of non-stop work. This surreal mural is located at Striletska Street in central Kyiv, and shows an archangel fighting a snake-man who resembles Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Another notable new Kyiv patriotic mural is the “Renaissance,” a 15-meter painting on Andriyivsky Uzviz, one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations. It was finished on Apr. 14. The authors are French artist Julien Malland, more known as Seth Globepaintre, and Oleksiy Kyslov from Crimea’s Sevastopol.
“Because of the strange situation in Ukraine we wanted to do something soft that would tell the story,” Malland said in an interview to Hromadske.tv on Apr. 14. “We don’t give a message; people can interpret it and make their own story.”
Malland says the young lady in the painting in Ukraine’s future. She holds a child in one hand and takes care of the city with the other.
“Renaissance” isn’t Malland’s only piece in Kyiv. Another mural by the French artist can be seen in Kyiv’s Olginska Street, not far from Instytutska Street, where snipers shot protesters on Feb. 18-20 during the climax of the EuroMaidan Revolution.
The painting at Olginska Street shows two boys sitting back to back, wearing sweaters in Ukraine’s yellow-and-blue colors, and holding Ukraine’s coat of arms. The painting was created in May.
“It represents the duality of Ukraine. Two brothers – one is looking west, one is looking east. But they are still together. It was my vision of what was going in Ukraine”, Malland told the Kyiv Post.
Oleksiy Bordusov, the partner of Manzhos in Interesni Kazki duo, has created another piece in Kyiv this autumn. In October he painted “Ukrainian St. George” mural in Velyka Zhytomyrska Street.
“Ukrainian St. George” mural in Velyka Zhytomyrska appeared in the place of the “Old City,” a 2013 graffiti that advertised beer and was a record-sized mural in Ukraine. Bordusov says he did not actually want to paint over another work, but this was the wall that local authorities commissioned for him to paint.
Iryna Zbitneva, a passer-by, told Kyiv Post on a recent night that she likes the new painting because it’s “very symbolic and timely for the current situation in Ukraine that has to defend its borders.”
The new mural pictures a falcon fighting an evil serpent, once again using the snake image to represent a threat to Ukraine. Bordusov says his art is an attempt “to capture the historical moment of the Ukrainians’ struggle for freedom and independence.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Torhan can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @OksanaTorhan.
