The most well-known artist in Ukraine creates art out of battle detritus, conveying the indescribable

The day his own country home was destroyed by a Russian attack forced the most well-known sculptor in Ukraine to make a somber creative turn from inside the wreckage of Russia’s conflict.

“It occurred accidentally when a rocket entered our dacha, our home… and my neighbors collected the missile debris,” Mikhail Reva said via a translator. “And it dawned on me to use those debris as a metaphor.”

After two years of the invasion, the Odesa native hasn’t stopped creating art that portrays the pain of his own country out of nearly two tons of war remnants, including bullets, poisoned Kalashnikov cartridges, and arresting collapsed shells. The sculptures, which are often enormous, are thought-provoking and poignant reminders of the essential role that art plays in expressing the inexpressible.

The US is resuming its relationship with UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency based in Paris, which it rejoined last year after a year-long break. As part of this initiative, the US has displayed wrought iron works, some with delicate wings and others religious and ironic, in the historic Hotel de Talleyrand of the US Embassy in Paris. It’s also an attempt to give voice to significant voices in a conflict that has claimed an unfathomable number of lives.

Jean Manes, the chargé d’affaires for the U.S. Mission to UNESCO, said, “In any long war you can get complacent, and art has the power to transcend, to make you stop and remember it’s about individuals.” “It has the power to restore your ability to see it, to see it with new eyes.”

Reva was forced to utilize rocket pieces from the real hit on his home to create 2023’s “The Flower of Death,” an attempt to make sense of the unfathomable devastation.

When I heard about the dacha assault, it was difficult for me as an artist to figure out how to convey the suffering via my work. “That was the pivotal inquiry,” he said.

Long before his work became more somber, Reva was well-known. Millions of people have seen his renownedly wacky sculptures in well-known squares and on beaches in Odesa, Kiev, and other places. But the never-ending fighting has forced his artwork to tell a darker story, one of perseverance and remembering in the face of the conflict’s horrors.

Among the collection, “The Memory of the Crucified” sticks out with its cross-shaped design made of nails taken from churches that were destroyed by Russian bombing. Together with “Aggressor,” a brashly sexualized sculpture with a provocatively positioned missile, this work effectively conveys the fundamental spirit of resistance against attack.

In the meanwhile, the irony of violence is personified by a massive Russian doll that is captioned “From Russia With Love” and has 1,000 bullet cartridges stuck in it as spikes.

“In my opinion, the materials are something that humans have made with the intention of killing someone. He said, “I wanted to demonstrate that I can create something lovely out of something meant to harm.

Reva said, “All of these pieces are from Russia with love,” with a lighthearted tone.

Later this month, the sculptures will be on public exhibit at the municipal halls of the 3rd and 15th districts of Paris.