The exhibition’s primary focus is Mariupol Deisis (2022) from the Icons on Ammo Boxes project by Sofia Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko, artists from Kyiv. This project would never have seen the light of day if war had not broken out in Ukraine in 2014. In the over one thousand-year history of iconography, a canon has taken shape that, among other things, assumes reliability, durability, and solidity. In other words, an icon must be written on a high-quality, properly dried, and adequately prepared board of correct form, without seams and especially without cracks…

At first glance, the icons of Sofia and Oleksandr are a provocation, a bold challenge to tradition. They break with the typical imagery of iconography, not to outrage, but to show that an icon that breaks with tradition can be convincing. Phoniness is not in the substance but in the eye of the beholder. It is precisely a perfect, richly decorated, and finely written icon that might look wrong at a time when a terrible war has violated the daily lives of millions of people. Those who are wounded, are refugees, and have lost their loved ones feel that all beauty has gone from their lives. In its place is horror, suffering, and grief. But even today, God Himself, His All-Holy Mother, and all the Saints are near. Icons on Ammo Boxes speak namely of this.