Art During War – A Sculptor’s Voice

When the house collapses, I shape a vessel.
When the light dies, I search for it in white.
In the shadow of war, I grow quiet and work.

I don’t believe in the heroism of the artist.
I believe in survival.

Not in loud art. Not in colors that demand attention.
I believe in a hand clenched from the cold.
In form shaped not by imagination, but by pain.
And in white — as the only color that hasn’t yet screamed.

When the house collapses, you don’t build a new one —
you gather the dust from the windowsill
and wonder how to preserve it.
Everything becomes memory.
Even cracks in the wall are no longer just cracks —
they’re the lines where tears once ran.

I shape a vessel because form is something you can hold.
And holding means living.
It means something still yields.
It means not everything has dissolved into chaos.

I don’t want to explain what I feel when war begins.
Explanation is a betrayal of the feeling.
Better to let the hands work.

I don’t create to heal.
I create not to disappear.

White is not a symbol of peace.
It’s the absence of screaming.
A clean wall, where fingerprints might still remain.
Clay that has not yet been touched by blood.

Sometimes I feel like I create from remnants.
What remains of the world.
Remnants of words.
Remnants of myself.

But it’s from remnants that strength is born.
Silence holds shape better than gloss.
Ash lays down softer than paint.

I don’t make art about war.
I make art during it.
From what is left.
From what still breathes.

War remains the backdrop.
Creation — the only way to speak.
The war is in its twelfth year.

— Natalia

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