One of the first things I learned in this job is that I’m not just writing about art; I’m writing about life, reflected through art. Writing in June about Amidst Cries from the Rubble: Art of Loss and Resilience from Ukraine , an exhibition running through April 2025 at the Museum of International Folk Art, is a great example. It features art pulled from the battlefield in Ukraine, fashioned from implements of war such as bullet casings and ammunition boxes.
Amidst Cries from the Rubble brought Ukraine to Santa Fe’s doorstep not just through its subject matter, but via visits from three featured artists — two of whom still live in Ukraine. I wasn’t able to make it when Yaroslava Tkachuk and Serhii Polubotko attended an opening ceremony, but I had the good fortune to attend both a private dinner and a public speech and Q&A by Marta Syrko in mid-September. She spoke about the realities of living in a home with a wooden ceiling in Lviv, Ukraine, near where a missile had just landed and knowing she’d have little chance of survival if one were to fall on her home.
Syrko was in demand at both events and had just arrived for her first visit to the United States, so I gave her some breathing room but emailed her questions, which she replied to after departing New Mexico. I consider her answers an augmentation of the Amidst Cries from the Rubble — an education many of us Americans need — and present them here with the warning that they’re raw and real, not speculatio.
