CMHR exhibit brings humanity to war

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This article was published 24/02/2023 (1303 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So little said, so much emotion conveyed.

That’s an immediate reaction to Ukrainian Artists United, a new exhibition at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that opens today, the one-year anniversary of Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine.

The opening coincides with a rally at the museum tonight at 6 p.m. hosted by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

The 25-minute film by Winnipeg artist and humanitarian Darcy Ataman and Los Angeles photographer Jason Wilheim shows vignettes of 11 artists from Lviv, western Ukraine’s major city, and their thoughts about how the conflict has changed their lives.

They each say only one or two sentences in their appearances but the message rings clear: Ukraine’s independence is worth fighting for and has a culture worth preserving.

“This old language is a grain for the future,” says poet Halyna Kruk in Ukrainian Artists United. She joins painters, a punk-rocker and player of the bandura, a traditional Ukrainian stringed instrument in the film, which includes a score performed by those on screen.

Ataman, who founded and leads the organization Make Music Matter that has helped more than 8,500 people in war zones using music therapy, was inducted into the Order of Manitoba in 2022.

He travelled to Lviv 10 months ago in the belief there were artists who wanted to share their feelings in the film.

Ukraine’s situation, with constant air-raid sirens and missile attacks by Russia that have killed thousands of civilians, is similar to the suffering he’s seen in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, except for one aspect.

“I saw that western media was paying attention to this war, and I thought it was a great opportunity to finally try my best as an artist to humanize conflict because it’s really hard to care about numbers,” Ataman says. “If you turn them into three-dimensional people that walk the earth, maybe we’ll care a bit more.”

Museum officials believe Ukrainian Artists United would be a timely addition for its Inspiring Change gallery, especially as the anniversary of Russia’s invasion approached. It remains on display until September and includes recordings at listening stations of musicians from other conflict zones.

“This fits so perfectly here for us because it is artists today engaging in a form of protest around what’s going on in Ukraine,” says Matthew Cutler, the museum’s vice-president of exhibitions. “Although this is the war that many of us are paying most attention to right now, these violations of human rights are happening around the world in other places.”

The human rights museum has become a venue for many protests and demonstrations in its history, and tonight’s event will likely be the one of the largest since the COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago.

It is offering free admission Friday night and the Hoosli Ukrainian Male Chorus will also perform.

“Whether it’s the protests, the commemoration and Darcy’s work, this is all the ecosystem of human rights,” Cutler says.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @AlanDSmall