“Living Ruins” is a sculptural response to the war in Ukraine.  It is an exploration of resilience through destruction, an attempt to transform visions of horror into symbolic hope.  This sculpture contains many threads of reflection; the irreducible transience of time, disintegration, ecological disaster, human sacrifice, and … that which cannot be spoken of.

The work is constructed by assembling and stacking abstract passageways of metal.  Recycled materials are stitched together with solder while others are fused with epoxy.  The torn, mutilated materials recall the fragility of life.

Ruins of war are like survivors, abstract warriors, blackened, still standing amidst the destruction.  These ruins, lapidated by projectiles, are inhabited by voices that cannot be silenced.  Split and flayed in abstract patterns, they refuse to topple over, to collapse under the weight of oppression.  Their smoldering skeletons stand like towering creatures, clinging fiercely to the roots of their foundations.

Despite everything, hope burns in the hollows of the scorched abyss of war.  The shadow cast by the work echoes the etching of false shadows burned on the battlefields.  Shadows are ephemeral.  They too, like war, will eventually fade away.

Exhibition “Transgression”, Madawaska Historical Museum, Edmundston, NB