Warsaw after a year of Ukrainian refugees
Warsaw is now practically bilingual. Everywhere you go you can hear Ukrainian and see Ukrainian. In every restaurant you can order in Ukrainian either from a Ukrainian that has found refuge in Warsaw or from a Pole that has had a lot of experience interacting with Ukrainians over the course of the past year.
Ukrainian businesses have slowly started spilling over the border into Poland, with restaurant and other business chains opening new locations. Ukrainians are learning Polish, working, studying and living in Poland. Housing prices have increased rapidly due to increased demand from the fast-growing population. These and other factors have caused some dissonance within Poland between refugees and Polish nationals.
During our visit to Warsaw, we were able to speak with some Ukrainians living in Poland as well as some locals. I was able to deduce these dissonances based on the stories that people shared with me. Right now, Ukraine is very present in Warsaw, with many cultural events and art exhibitions that have resulted from the war. We were able to visit the “Ukraine: under a different sky” art exhibition at Ujazdowski Castle, Centre for Contemporary Art. An exhibition of “works by Ukrainian artists created in response to Russian aggression”. It features more than 200 works. The experience was intense and sad. Some of the art was graphic and a lot of it depicted both physical and mental destruction.
We attended a poetry reading at which a new series of poetry books were presented as a collaboration between Polish and Ukrainian poets. This series is called “Evacuation”, and features the poems of Ukrainian poets, written after February 24th, 2022. The series features a separate book for each author, in which every poem appears in its original Ukrainian language as well as a translation into Polish by collaborative Polish poets. The poetry was raw and moving.
We ended the week by seeing a small exhibition of oil paintings at Polin Museum by polish artist Andrzej Fogtt, expressing the atrocities in Bucha, a Ukrainian city outside of Kyiv, where so many were raped, tortured and killed.
This trip was intense, sad and overwhelming. Despite having those feelings, I gathered a lot of information and context for my project.
I have paraphrased a few things that were mentioned to me, that really stood out:
Words lost their meaning when the war began. The first few days and weeks I just had anger, I couldn’t write.
The world became black and white. The good doesn’t make me smile and the bad doesn’t make me cry. I have lost the ability to feel.
War leaves its’ imprint on anything you make.
Guided by the interviews and experiences of that week, I will now move on to another music phase of the project, during which I will arrange the 7 sketches I had previously written, first horizontally, creating a song structure, and later vertically by adding layers, counter melodies, etc. with the goal of telling Ukrainian War Stories.
Until the Sun Comes.
Please share this project with others, keep reading news about Ukraine, keep talking about Ukraine, keep donating to Ukraine.
Thank you for joining me in this project.
This project is made possible with the support of Canada Council for the Arts.