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Diego Salazar (Rombo, b. 1993)
Soft Pastels on Paper, 2022
36 × 60 inches (original size)
 
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — an act that Salazar, like much of the world, received with horror and a particular kind of helplessness. ¡Viva Ucrania! is his response: not a protest sign, but a work of art in the tradition of historical documentation, made in the conviction that drawing is a form of witness.
 
The image stages a confrontation between two monumental figures scaled to the dimensions of buildings — giants in a landscape crossed by fighter jets and the debris of war. On one side stands the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moscow: a suited figure wielding the hammer and sickle of Soviet iconography, the instruments of the invasion literalized as weapons. On the other stands the Motherland Monument — Rodina-Mat' — the enormous sword-bearing statue that rises above Kyiv, built during the Soviet era but now wholly claimed by Ukraine as a symbol of its own resilience and will to survive. In Salazar's image she is wounded, bearing the marks of the attack on her body, but she is holding. She is not falling.
 
Salazar's approach to political subject matter is rooted in his understanding of art as historical record — less propaganda than testimony, less slogan than image. The piece does not tell you what to feel; it shows you what happened, at the scale it deserved.
 
Available as a signed and numbered limited edition reproduction print.
 
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