Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
Visiting a military base in 2014, Ukrainian artist and icon painter Oleksandr Klymenko was struck by how much the bottom and cover of a wooden ammunition box could resemble a Christian icon panel.
He borrowed one of the boxes from the base and painted a Byzantine icon featuring the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child on its cover. Klymenko said the icon looked at least 800-years-old.
Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Klymenko shows his artwork and part of an ammunition box at a studio in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 26th March, 2021. Instead of using regular wooden panels, artists Sofia Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko paint icons on the covers and bottoms of ammunition boxes brought from the eastern Donbass region, the epicentre of Ukraine’s conflict with Russian-backed separatists. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
The experiment led Klymenko and his wife, artist Sofia Atlantova, to start a charity project to raise money for a volunteer field hospital treating soldiers in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Since its launch in 2015, the project has raised $US300,000 and the artworks have been displayed in Belgium, Germany, Canada, the United States and elsewhere.
Klymenko says the project, called ‘Buy an icon – save a life’, is based on the idea of transforming death, symbolised by the ammunition boxes, into life, symbolised by the icons.
Ukrainian artist Sofia Atlantova is pictured at a studio in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 26th March. Instead of using regular wooden panels, artists Sofia Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko paint icons on the covers and bottoms of ammunition boxes brought from the eastern Donbass region, the epicentre of Ukraine’s conflict with Russian-backed separatists. PICTURE: Reuters/Gleb Garanich
“An ammunition box – like a coffin – is taken from under the ground, where it was previously stored. Once it is opened, death breaks out of it and destroys everything around,” Klymenko told Reuters in his workshop.
“We transform it by painting life.”
Fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed forces in the eastern Donbass region has killed 14,000 people since 2014, Ukraine says. Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame for a recent spike in violence.
An icon painted on wooden planks from ammunition boxes is pictured at a studio in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 26th March. PICTURE: Reuters/Gleb Garanich
“Most people think of this war as of something very far away…It was important for me to show people that the war is real, that this ammunition box is real and it stored real weapons which killed real people,” Klymenko said.
“I don’t want this war to exist. And I don’t want this project to exist either.”
