I’ve never been to Mariupol, although now it seems to me that I know this city, the layout of its streets, the people who live there. More precisely: I know the horror that happened there in spring 2022. And people, many of whom are probably no longer among the living. All thanks to Ana. It was she who infused the horror of Mariupol into me, brought it so close to me that it entered my dreams.
The futility of the first months of this war was terrible for me. I envied those who had to get up in the morning and go to work. If you are a freelance artist, you have to create this discipline yourself. After February 24, 2022, not only did I see no point in continuing the work I had started, I also saw no point in anything I had previously created. It seemed as if the war had irrevocably erased the previous world, and in this new reality all art was meaningless. It was total professional paralysis.