Icons on Ammo Boxes

This talk is part of the exhibition Four Seasons in Faith: Worship in Edinburgh Throughout the Year.

Icons on Ammo Boxes is a project conceived by Ukrainian artists Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko, which combines seemingly incompatible things: the attributes of modern war, and the ancient artistic language, which dates back to the European Middle Ages.

The main idea of the project is to transform death: the symbol of which is an ammunition box, into life: which in Ukrainian culture is traditionally personified by an icon. Thus, the Russian war against Ukraine is comprehended against the background of Ukrainian and even European history of the last millennium. The boxes on which the icons are written are brought from the war zone. In this way, the icons written on their fragments are silent but eloquent witnesses of this war.