“Art @ War”

Many visitors were now (Tuesday, 19.06.) at the exhibition opening “Art@War: Impressions and Experiences from Different Sides of the Front Line” in Siegen. The exhibition deals with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which flared up again only a few weeks ago. “It’s important for us to make this exhibition as the people in Germany don’t get enough information of this war,” said Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf, Dean of Faculty III at Siegen University. His Chair of Information Systems and New Media is organizing the exhibition together with the International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI).

The background is a project by Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf, who, together with the Danish scientist Irina Shklovski, has researched how people in war use technology in the Russian-Ukrainian border region. “The injuries are on both sides of the front line,” Wulf said. In the course of his work he also got to know several artists and invited them to an exhibition in Germany.

Gallery 42 will show photos, paintings and installations by the four Ukrainian artists until June 26. “It is very important for us to know that we are not alone,” said artist Oksana Stomina at the opening. On the upper floor of the exhibition rooms, for example, they have recreated a minefield. Visitors can carefully walk over wooden sticks and cords to the next exhibition space.

Everyday objects such as trousers and individual shoes are hung on a wall, forming the word “war”. They are supposed to symbolize that people die in war, but their personal things are left behind. On the ground floor, a series of pictures shows how the city of Mariupol in the Ukrainian-Russian border region changed as a result of the war. “The children and adults there can recognize the various guns by the sound,” artist Oksana Stomina reported during a guided tour through the rooms. She has also created a poetry collection for the exhibition, which has been translated into German and English and is available in the gallery.

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