Art in a front-line city

Let's introduce Maria Drozdova, one of the Ukrainian artists living in the front line of the war. The first issue of THE JOURNEY will be devoted to them.

The images are a selection by Maria which she shares as a sample of this her production. Let read what she write to us about her experience:

"I haven't done analog collage in a while because I switched to digital collage. But I came back to this technique because of the living conditions in the front-line city. There were days when Kharkiv was de-energized after massive shelling. There was no electricity, no water, no heating, no cell phone service, no internet because the electrical substations were broken. It was winter time, daylight hours were short, lighting was poor, light sources had to be economized. Under these circumstances, analog collage, was one of not many ways to work.  I live in Kharkiv, the city is close to the border with Russia. On February 24, 2022, in one night the city was taken in a semicircle and part of the Kharkiv region was occupied by Russian army. The Russian army was constantly shelling the city; there were days when the shelling seemed to be continuous. It was only worse when the city was shelled by Russian aircraft and when there was a breach of the city's defense and there were street battles. Then there was a counter-offensive and Kharkov survived, although shelling from Russia happens now, as well as throughout Ukraine. After the counter-offensive, it became known what was happening on the de-occupied territories. It was realized that horror has no limit. 

It was difficult for me to be in the plane of art. Art, at that  time, could not close the experience I experienced at that moment. It took me a while to get back into art."

Here the link to contact her:

https://www.instagram.com/drozdova_mariia/