Dmytro Buryan

Dmytro Buryan is a Ukrainian graphic artist and sculptor from Cherkasy. Dmytro has sought to serve since the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion to Ukraine, and is now defending the state on its southern borders. He is the only artist in his department, but he is not able to engage in creativity during the service, only sometimes he has the opportunity to do a simple sketch of a machine gun or a tank from memory. He says that the best support for artists at the front is moral, because artists are “very emotional people”. Dmytro tells us his story: „In 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea and partly Donbas, I had a huge resentment because very few artists sympathized with our country by their art. These acts of Russian aggression… When only a dozen artists, who are acquaintances of mine, opened up about this topic, it was a real pain. However, now I see the depiction spreading en masse.

It’s being depicted in paintings and a huge number of drawings, in different styles. I am glad to see the popularity of empathy towards our nation nowadays. We have the culture as a part of propaganda in a clearly good way. Century earlier, the soviet government shot down our writers, artists, for instance, Boychuk, Zerov. I understand that Russia’s successful occupation of major Ukrainian territories would mean the same suffering for the current artists. We can see it’s repeating by common civilians. In the governmental point of view, the art follows the residual principle. Private business is being financed by our government much more than the art of young, self-sufficient and original artists. I hope it will change“.

Interviewed by Dionysii Vynohradiv