Authors

Discussion

The war art from Ukraine created during the first months of the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022 reveals a visceral depiction of the everyday experience of violence. This art is personal, raw and reactive. Beyond these near-instantaneous representations, however, traces of accretive violence linger, revealing deeper historical forms of violence. Examination of this war art unfolds the depictions of unseen violence and illuminates entwined historical realities catalysed by Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Advancing Rob Nixon’s notion of ‘invisible violence’, what he calls slow violence, I draw attention to the tension between present violence and the continuing violence that has its roots in the past. I contend that the invasion has triggered visual representations of fragments of ‘slow violence’, which permeate depictions of wartime experiences. The ruptures caused by the rapid violence of the Russian invasion have exposed a palimpsest of underlying perpetual and temporally compounded violence; references to past forms of resistance mark current strategies of resilience. The imprint of slow violence is silent and attritional, originating in the past. It is memory that binds the past to the present in the process of constructing the future. My presentation will unveil and explore the fear of atomic annihilation embedded in contemporary visual imagery.

The investigation centres on the artwork of contemporary Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze, who addresses the pervasive theme of nuclear fear in her visual production; in capturing the primary intensity of fear, she creates revelatory experiences that unveil alternative temporalities of violence. Her work expresses nuclear fear and resilience, presenting multiple temporal perspectives fuelled by Russia’s nuclear threat. Kakhidze’s war art not only recalls the ‘slow violence’ of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster but also intertwines the past trauma with both the immediate and imagined threat of atomic warfare in Russia's war on Ukraine. Through fragments of past lives, the art suggests a legacy of violence that touches on the themes of invasion and loss, challenging the notion that the war art from Ukraine offers a singular narrative of violence tied solely to the Russian invasion. Instead, Kakhidze’s pieces represent a broader history of generational violence endured by Ukrainians, reflecting the contemporary conflict as part of a continuum that has strengthened and consolidated Ukrainian identity.