The National Union of Artists of Ukraine together with the public organization “Green Strip” have initiated the artistic project “Flowers of Victory”
The goal is to draw global attention to the crimes and genocide perpetrated by Russia on Ukrainian territory. The project is based on symbolic words about seeds that will sprout on Ukrainian soil after the death of the Russian occupier.
The head of “Green Strip,” Oleksandr Kuklyshyn, and the chairman of the National Union of Artists (NSHU), Kostiantyn Cherniavskyi, presented the concept of this project to journalists and the public, as reported by the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications.
According to Oleksandr Kuklyshyn, the idea for the project emerged back in 2014-2015. It is planned to showcase the criminal terrorist nature of the Russian military, which has been conducting a full-scale war for three years and kills the peaceful population of our country daily.
It is symbolic that the project mentions Svitlana Pankova, a resident of Henichesk in the Kherson region. At the start of the full-scale invasion, she advised one of the Russian occupiers to put sunflower seeds in his pocket so that they would sprout after his death in Ukraine.
The chairman of NSHU, Kostiantyn Cherniavskyi, emphasized that this project is very important and relevant in the context of a broad information campaign worldwide, aimed at spreading facts about Russia's crimes in Ukraine. In this sense, the role of art and cultural diplomacy is extremely significant.
“The Russians' goal from the very beginning was not just to physically destroy us; they wanted to break the Ukrainian nation spiritually. One only needs to recall how they destroyed Ukrainian theaters, museums, and libraries, as they understood the threat that the Ukrainian word, spirituality, and culture in general posed to their colonial policy,” said Cherniavskyi.
“Flowers of Victory” is a sculptural composition being created by the sculptor, People's Artist of Ukraine Bohdan Mazur. At the center of the composition are sunflowers sprouting from enemy equipment as symbols of future victory over the eternal Ukrainian foe. The metaphorical device used by the author consists of words from a Ukrainian woman from the Kherson region, addressed to the Russian occupier.
Work on the project is ongoing. The initiators promise to showcase it to the whole world to finally shatter the illusions about the “Russian world.”