Ceramic is very fragile, but there are cases in which even such a material can turn into a symbol of resistance.
As the war in Ukraine continues, a humble ceramic cockerel came to symbolise resilience and turned into a meme when a picture started circulating of a building bombed by the Russians in Borodianka. The photograph by Elizabeth Servatynska showed a destroyed building, with a kitchen cabinet left intact among the destruction and a ceramic cockerel still standing on top of it. The image also inspired Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Grekhov one of his illustrations, that he posted on his Instagram page accompanied by the comment: "If the cabinet could, so can we!".
Located around 60km north-west of Kyiv, Borodianka was heavily affected by Russian shelling: a few days ago Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated on Telegram that the situation there was "much more disastrous" than Bucha, where images emerged of deliberate civilian killings.
The ceramic rooster was first designed by the Ukrainian artist and sculptor Prokop Bidasiuk.
Born in 1895, Bidasiuk worked at a majolica factory and created a variety of items - among the others, dishes, vases, jugs and toys. His work is displayed at the National Museum of Folk Decorative Arts in Kyiv, one of the largest art museums in Ukraine. The institution preserves indeed a collection of over 79,000 artefacts of Ukrainian traditional folk and professional decorative art, dating from the 15th century onwards (including folk costumes and works by textile artist and embroiderer Hanna Veres), plus archived collections from both the Kyevo-Mezhighirskaya faience factory and Volokitinsky porcelain works.
British PM Boris Johnson yesterday met Ukrainian President Zelenskiy in Kyiv: as they walked through the empty streets surrounded by armed soldiers, they were presented with ceramic cockerels by a bystander, a woman from Kharkiv. Her gesture, dignity and smile were a moment of joy, through all the horrors seen in the last few weeks. (Grekhov recently posted another of his illustrations regarding this event, featuring Johnson, the cockerel and the ironic comment: "You, when you tell your grandma that you'll only stop by a few minutes to drink some tea, but your grandma only made tea and nothing else").
In previous posts we looked at Leoncillo Leonardi who created ceramic works inspired by the Second World War (you may remember his works "A mother from Rome killed by the Germans", "Night Bombing" and "The Partisan Woman") and at Ai Weiwei's porcelain bouquets installed in the sinks, toilets, and tubs inside Alcatraz's old medical wing to hint at the possibility of bringing beauty and comfort to the imprisoned. But this story proves that, sometimes, unexpectedly, even an unassuming ceramic jug can turn into a symbol of strength, resistance and resilience.
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