Collage Story Box: Ukrainian Pieta by John Kohan

October 13, 2024

Collage Story Box: Ukrainian Pieta by John Kohan

Regular visitors to the website who know of my passion for the contemporary sacred art of Ukraine will not be surprised to learn the theme of my first collage story box in fifteen years is the tragic human cost of Ukraine's struggle against Russian invaders. Inspiration came from a sticker of "Saint Javelin" from a Ukrainian shop with a paradoxical image of a Byzantine holy woman craddling a Javelin anti-tank weapon like a child in arms, emblematic of the ways family life has been up-ended in this nation on war-footing. I paired four icons from Ukrainian Greek Catholic women in my collection of Pieta, where a distraught Virgin Mary holds the lifeless body of Christ, with press photos of Ukrainian women grieving for family members slain in the war. A carved wood pendant crucifix lies face up before a final picture of parents mourning their child killed in a Russian missile attack. The Mother of Christ in a deeply-revered 11th century mosaic in Kyiv's St. Sophia Cathedral presides over the scene with arms raised in a prayer of protection for the Ukrainian people. My first box proved too small for the tableau. Even this second, larger one, cannot hold the grief and pain of these Ukrainian mothers weeping like the biblical Rachel for their children "who are no more." (John Kohan)