Arcana Belli

Technique:
Digital art
Year:
2022

Is it possible to keep the memory of the unthinkable, about those that cannot be put into simple words? Since the beginning of the russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I have been depicting the events of our fight in war posters. After realizing that loads of exploits and tragedies have been hiding behind human faces in mass media, I started to incorporate real individuals into collective images and archetypes. Therefore, I use means of expression of woodcut, traditional iconography and Francisco Goya's series "The Disasters of War''. All the emphasis falls not on the "photographic" reproduction of reality but on the hidden symbolic essence. The desire of depicting the realities of war in a full cycle brought me to the tarot tradition. I think of tarot cards not as a tool for predicting the future but rather as a method of reality depiction in an ordered symbolic structure of 78 images. For that reason the project is a result of a combination of real war images and classical Rider-Waite tarot iconography of 1910 illustrated by Pamela Smith. With the help of those I am trying to expand the focus of people’s perception of contemporary events while looking at them through the prism of centuries-old symbolic tradition.

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli

NEIVANMADE. Arcana Belli