Children’s drawings from the war in Ukraine exhibited in Poland
“A small child draws the sun, flowers, kittens. But not a gallows or corpses. » An exhibition of drawings by Polish children who lived through the Second World War and young Ukrainians today examines the view of the youngest on the war. “The way children perceive war, what they feel, what they convey through their drawings, it’s very similar… It’s suffering, pure and simple”explains to Agence France-Presse Dorota Sadowska, the curator of this exhibition presented in Warsaw.
Composed of several hundred drawings, the traveling exhibition travels through the cities of Poland, but also goes abroad, by a joint Polish and Ukrainian effort. Drawn and colored with markers, pencils or, sometimes, with digital tools, the works of Ukrainian children testifying to the invasion of their country by Russia come from the collection of the site Mom, I see the war.
The latter collected thousands of drawings, to make a permanent digital photo collage for an NFT auction. Proceeds will be used to help war-affected children.
The Polish section of the exhibition, largely in pencil and on paper now browned by time, presents drawings made in 1946 for a national competition organized at the time. They have since been kept in the Archives in Warsaw.
The idea of the exhibition was that “the world watches children, listens to what they say and feel”explains M.me Sadowska. “Maybe then [le monde] will see that in wartime, every child is a victim, every child suffers. » It is also about“to encourage adults to think about what can be done to change this”she insists.
The drawings representing tanks, corpses, planes on fire, buildings with gaping holes, soldiers, torture, tears…