I grew up in Odessa and Moscow, and came to America when I was 17. I was beginning to feel the weight of decades of the nation’s tragedy and silence.
In New York, I saw and felt a different pain and a different silence. I went to Barnard College—a campus surrounded by poverty, homelessness, crime, unseen or ignored by most of American society.
I became an adult here. I raised my children here. I worked and made art and volunteered and protested.
I tried to make sense of my two, then three, countries.
The weight of this war is unbearable. I speak to friends whose sons—my son’s age—are in The Territorial Defense Force. I spoke to one of the boys. From the barracks near Kiev, still in training, he told me his unit did not have helmets, bulletproof vests, tourniquets.
I feel enormous rage.
I draw. No drawing can show what photographs and videos show. I draw my rage.
Lilia Levin is a visual artist, art educator, and designer. Her art has been exhibited at Uptown Images, Ceres Gallery, and AIR Gallery, among others, and has been featured in Slate, Link’s Eye, The Iconoclast, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City.
I grew up in Odessa and Moscow, and came to America when I was 17. I was beginning to feel the weight of decades of the nation’s tragedy and silence.
In New York, I saw and felt a different pain and a different silence. I went to Barnard College—a campus surrounded by poverty, homelessness, crime, unseen or ignored by most of American society.
I became an adult here. I raised my children here. I worked and made art and volunteered and protested.
I tried to make sense of my two, then three, countries.
The weight of this war is unbearable. I speak to friends whose sons—my son’s age—are in The Territorial Defense Force. I spoke to one of the boys. From the barracks near Kiev, still in training, he told me his unit did not have helmets, bulletproof vests, tourniquets.
I feel enormous rage.
I draw. No drawing can show what photographs and videos show. I draw my rage.
Lilia Levin is a visual artist, art educator, and designer. Her art has been exhibited at Uptown Images, Ceres Gallery, and AIR Gallery, among others, and has been featured in Slate, Link’s Eye, The Iconoclast, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City.