A light in the darkness

Earlier this week I should have sent my bi-monthly newsletter to the subscribers to my mailing list. I had prepared it weeks ago, listing recent activity and forthcoming news, but I couldn’t bring myself to press send. It feels too absurd right now.

In the face of everything going on, normal life can feel completely superficial, an oblivious denial of the horror of war, a smokescreen of normality that masks the gaping wounds of a world in turmoil. It feels obscene and privileged to sit here behind my computer screen, safe in the warmth of my flat, promoting exhibitions and fairs… so I will not be sending the newsletter.

But I will not stop making Art and talking about Art.

Art can be one of the greatest way of protesting against violence, of subverting propaganda, of resisting oppression. It can promote peace, soothe fear and pain, and connect people across a fractured world. It can express horror and anguish when words fail, like Picasso’s “Guernica” or Munch’s “The Scream”. It can create a language of revolt and protest, like the posters created by students during the Mai 68 revolt in France. It can rally minds around shared values, like Eluard’s poem “J’écris ton nom” (I write your name) or Delacroix”s “Liberté guidant le peuple” (Liberty guiding the people). It can build bridges across divides, it give voices to the dispossessed, it can help rebuild the world with compassion and humanity…

Of course, compared to these giants, my voice (through my works and these words) is nothing but a grain of sand, a drop of water in the ocean..

But millions of voices are rising together right now, in condemnation of the actions of Putin, in support and solidarity with the people of Ukraine, in demands for action from the leaders of the world to stop this war. And together these voices shine like a beacon in the night that is falling.

Millions of grains of sand together can be as big as the desert, as powerful as a sandstorm; and millions of drops of water can be as powerful as an ocean; or even better, in the words of Victor Hugo, in the poem “Dans l’ombre”:

“Tu me crois la marée, et je suis le déluge”.

“You think I am the tide but I am the deluge”

Solidarity with the people of Ukraine.