Childhood stolen. Instead of enjoying the warm spring days with friends, riding bikes and carousels in the parks, children hide in bomb shelters. They plug their ears against the sounds of air raid sirens and artillery, look at the tear-stained faces of their mothers, and wait in unbearable lines at the borders.
This project, created in collaboration between the Belarusian Women's Fund and the Fundacja ŻYVI, aims to highlight the experiences of children in the ongoing war in Ukraine. We hope that through this exhibition, children's drawings will shed new light on a war that is steadily becoming emotionally distant. While the attention of the world is focused on the machinations of politicians, statistics and death, the smallest of us have been forgotten.
The drawings for this exhibition were drawn by children between the ages of five and fourteen at the Fundacja ŻYVI, while their mothers received the necessary humanitarian first aid. The exhibition also features drawings of children from Belarus who have already experienced forced resettlement and found a new home in Ukraine, and are again forced to flee, but this time from the war. At the age when children draw fairy-tale characters, animals, flowers and their happy parents, children of war draw their destroyed houses and bombs. For many of us, the everyday experience of war is unthinkable. For these children, war will be their earliest memory and will change the course of their lives.
Most of the drawings of war witnesses depict hearts. Despite the horrific scenes of war and their experiences, children bring us light and love in their hearts and in their drawings.
Adults are responsible for what these children are living, and the bare minimum of responsibility is acknowledgement. Children belong to no one nation. They are a future that must be safeguarded.
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Curator: Natalia Schindler email: art@belaruswomen.org