Ukraine ablaze

War Diary

Technique:

Chinese ink, red pen, watercolour

Year:

2022 – ...

An ongoing series of drawings that currently consists of 4 books.

The fabric of existence in today's wartime reality is transforming.

The existential crisis and trauma of experiencing a full-scale invasion turned Margo Sarkisova's artistic practice into reflection in the form of semi-abstract drawings that eventually shaped the War Diary project. The artist began to work on it intuitively amidst the air raids roaring and hiding in bomb shelters. These diaries are raw and subjective depictions of personal experiences. They served as a “safe” space for self-expression, and at the same time, they are an attempt to capture the permanent danger and other emotional states since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A new part of the series, the fourth book, was started in October 2022, but work was stopped for almost eight months. It was at this time that the forced migration of Margo Sarkisova from Ukraine to Austria took place. These circumstances brought many new changes to reflecting on the essence and purpose of the artist's diary.

Since February 2022, the diary has been an intuitive response to a full-scale war launched by Russia, but new questions and challenges have arisen with the forced migration abroad. How is war experienced while abroad? Specific isolation and exclusion and, at the same time, events unfolding in the artist's native country, inseparable from her life, led her to the metaphor of fabric and embroidery. A new “fabric of reality” is being created before our eyes. War is woven into all processes around us, superimposing its unstable and vulnerable pattern on the common picture of various contexts and realities. The parable, endlessly replicated from page to page, indicates the critical contrasts (sharp emotional transitions) that occur due to permanent uncertainty about the future.

Margo Sarkisova. War Diary