Unlike younger men, who must stay in Ukraine in case they are mobilised into the army, Pavlo Makov, 66, could leave the country if he wanted.
Instead, the artist, one of Ukraine’s most senior and respected cultural figures, is living in Kharkiv, his hometown.
Situated about 18 miles from the Russian border, Ukraine’s second city suffers brutal missile attacks night after night – only to spring to life in the daytime, when parks, cafes and restaurants fill up with those brave or stubborn enough to cling on to life here.
Kharkiv is a city where cultural activity takes place on ground floors or – even better – underground, in basement bars, theatres and bookshops.
Makov and his wife are among those who take their chances. The nearest Metro station, which would offer protection from raids, is 500m away, “and most of the attacks on Kharkiv are so fast that as soon as you hear the sound of the alarm the bombs have already fallen”.
And so, they put in ear plugs and lay a bet with death that they will survive the night.
He and his family escaped Kharkiv and lived for a time in Italy at the beginning of the war in 2022. But, like many Ukrainians, he found living away from home more stressful than being present, despite the bombs.
“I could have stayed in Italy but realised I was losing my senses. After six months you lose the ability to understand what you are doing there. When we came back I immediately I thought: ‘OK, I’m in my place.’”
Makov has recently renovated a new studio in the city. It is on the ground floor: less vulnerable to air attack than his old, fourth-floor place. Its windows are small for an artist’s studio – but practical for a city where glass gets blown out of buildings every day.
On an easel is a large, bold new drawing in vivid shades of emerald and orange – a departure for Makov who, for years, has worked mostly in highly intricate monochrome prints and graphite pencil.
It is a drawing of a somewhat battered urban weed that grows in the cracks in the pavement. “It’s exactly how I feel myself now: a bit ruined but still alive,” Makov said.
The weed is a kind of plantain, different species of which grow across the world. In Ukraine, this humble plant is often applied to bruises or scrapes as a folk remedy. Its name, podorozhnyk, literally translates as “by the road” – a state of being for the many Ukrainians who are dealing with being displaced, or the threat of being made homeless by a shifting frontline or falling bombs.
“We all have this feeling that we are living from suitcases,” Makov said. His rucksack always stands by the door, packed with his vital documents and ready for a swift departure.
The image of this plant, and its metaphorical power, was a way of tackling the overwhelming subject of war indirectly, he said.
“The language of war is so strong, so powerful. It is so enormous that none of us can compete with its power,” he said. “But at the same time, art exists. It has always existed. They were using it in caves to explain the world, to find a connection with the world. You’ll never save the world with it – but it will help you survive your life.”
When the invasion began on 24 February 2022, Makov, like other artists in the city, took refuge in Kharkiv’s contemporary art gallery, the Yermilov Centre, which is in the concrete basement of a university building.
He was due to represent his country at the Venice Biennale – the art world’s most prestigious regular international gathering, which opened in April of that year. But sheltering from the bombings, he abandoned all thoughts of making it to Italy – until one of the project’s curators called him and told him she had part of his artwork in her car, she was already in Vienna, and she was determined to show something for her country, come what may.
The next morning Makov and his family made their escape, racing to their car as a cruise missile hit the nearby headquarters of the SBU security service. One of his tyres got a puncture owing to the broken glass strewing the roads. He had to make an emergency return dash to his mother’s flat, because she had forgotten her false teeth. But the family and their pets made it out. And he did end up representing Ukraine at the Venice Biennale.
But it was no thanks to the Ukrainian government, he said.
“I got two telephone calls from the ministry of culture of Italy, asking whether we needed some help. And no phone call from from the ministry of culture of Ukraine.
“It was like we didn’t exist,” he said. “OK, there was a war. But if you’re the ministry of culture, your war is there, in the world of culture.” The Ukrainian gallery with whom he works, The Naked Room, is still out of pocket because of the event “because we got no support from the state” beyond the hiring of the space in which the exhibition was held.
Compared with Russia, which projects itself internationally via its literature, music, ballet and opera, Ukraine was way behind on promoting itself through culture, he said.
There is no museum of contemporary art in the country. “We have a unique situation, now,” he said. “For the first time in the history of Ukraine, three generations of artists are alive, not killed, and the art they produced has not been destroyed.” It was evidence of a kind of “provincialism”, he said, “a kind of disrespect to yourself”, not to have built such an institution in an independent Ukraine.
“Why am I interested in Great Britain? Not because it won this war or lost this war, it is because Turner is British and I love Turner. Why do I love Ireland? Because James Joyce is one of my favourite writers.”
“In Ukraine we don’t have any kind of vision of how to represent Ukraine as a cultural society. We have writers, we have poets, we have we have all these things that we can export, but nobody’s doing that. All our cultural exporting is based on volunteer movements.”
Ukrainian society had been changed for ever by the war, he said Huge population shifts had been caused by internal displacement and by trauma, but also through the great divides opening up between individuals, based on their very different experiences during the war: soldiers living through a hellish trench warfare on the front, compared with those far behind the lines or those based abroad.
Even so, he said, “We all have one general idea: we need the end of the war. Better, a victory, but at least some kind of stable peace.” But like many others in Ukraine, he finds it hard to envision, under the current circumstances, how that might be achieved. “Normally a stable peace comes if your enemy is destroyed. And I can’t imagine that we can destroy Russia, somehow. Russia has a lot of fat under the skin.”
“This drama has been going on now for over three years. It will soon have been going on for as long as the second world war. And I don’t think that people understand Russians will never stop unless they are stopped. If they’re not stopped, they will never stop.”
