24 fFebruary 2022 – February 24, 2023. It has been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A year of rockets and bombed schools, tanks and people on the run. Just to remember how long and difficult this year has been, and to restore hope to the affected populations but also to those who try to support them, the Italian street artist Tvboy made 15 new works in Ukraine. They are inspired by the humanitarian activities of the Cesvi Foundation, the Italian NGO active in the country since the outbreak of the war. And they have women, children and the elderly as protagonists: the most vulnerable in the emergency.
Tvboy’s works in Ukraine
A child placing a sunflower into the barrel of a gun; a yellow-blue dove holding an olive branch in its beak; flowers that are born in a military helmet; an elderly man walking hand in hand with a child, while the words ‘Hope’ and ‘Future’ are repeated like an auspicious mantra.
These are some of the 15 works by Tvboy that appeared between 24 and 27 January 2023 in Bucha and near the capital Kyiv, in Ukraine in some very emblematic places.
Street art in symbolic places of conflict
The urban artist, which many have renamed the Italian Banksyhas always used his art as socially useful tool, an open-air invitation to ask questions about current issues. The collaboration with Cesvi goes in this sense: «the message contained in each work is one of rebirth and hope», said the artist.
Among the subjects represented in Ukraine, a child who places a sunflower in a gun barrel, flowers that are born in a military helmet, a child who warms up thanks to a brush fire. Among the symbolic places chosen to spread the message of peace, there is the Arcobaleno nursery school in Bucha, reopened after CESVI repaired the damage caused by the conflictallowing 300 girls and boys to return to attend it.
A work by Tvboy in Ukraine (Cesvi press office)
“SOS”, on the other hand, which depicts a child warming up with a brush fire, was positioned in Buča near the first heating points to symbolize the emergency that CESVI has been facing in recent weeks, ie the cold.
The cold emergency in Ukraine
The UN estimated in December that 50% ofenergy infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged by Russian attacks, putting millions at risk of disease and death, with temperatures dropping up to -20°. The situation is particularly difficult for beyond 10 million people who live near the front line, where there is no water, heating or electricity.
To respond to what is a real cold emergency, in Buča Cesvi is setting up 11 “heating points”, heated structures where it is possible to find shelter from the cold, but also food and hot drinks, biscuits and homogenised food for children, electricity to charge phones. And the #UNACOPERTAFORLUKRAINA fundraising campaign is underway to help 20,000 people, especially women, children and the elderly, cope with the frost.
Sos, a work by Tvboy in Ukraine (photo Cesvi)
Economic and psychosocial support, Cesvi’s projects in Ukraine
Among Cesvi’s ongoing projects is also that of economic support to the most vulnerable displaced persons. But also psychosocial support for children and adults suffering from post-traumatic stress symptoms, in Bucha and in the Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil regions. Cesvi was one of the first Italian NGOs to intervene in Ukraine right from the early stages of the war, the first to arrive as far as Buča.
As the flow of refugees into neighboring European countries intensified, it launched interventions in Poland, Romania and Hungary. In Poland (Lublin) it has activated a reception project for womenwomen fleeing war with young children, providing food, shelter and support. In Romania, in Sighet he welcomed the women who have chosen to stay on the border with the children in the hope of returning home.
Palermo, 1980. Who is Tvboy
Originally from Palermo, real name Salvatore Benintende (born July 16, 1980), Tvboy has been nicknamed “the Italian Banksy”. But his fame has grown and together with the famous and mysterious English street artist, Tvboy is exhibiting right now in Bologna. The exhibition “Jago, Banksy, TvBoy and other counter-current stories“ is hosted in the premises of Palazzo Albergati until May 7, 2023. Tvboy is one of the main exponents of the Neo Pop movement, an international postmodern artistic current that has developed since the 1990s. His works have been exhibited everywhere, from Rome to Barcelona, from Monaco to Miami. But, above all, in the streets: his canvases are the cities, the palaces, the bridges. Among his objectives, the reinterpretation of political and social facts in an ironic and irreverent way (such as the famous kiss between Salvini and Di Maio or the work against neo-fascism and neo-Nazism).
Ukraine one year after the outbreak of war
The civilian death toll, according to the calculations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Ohchr), as of 23 January 2023 is 18,483 people affected: 7,068 killed and 11,415 injured. There are 403 girls and boys among the people killed, 571 among those injured. L‘United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that they are instead 8 million people fled from Ukraine to other European countries, while internally displaced people would be 6.5 million: is the worst humanitarian crisis on the continent since the Second World War. Italy has registered on the territory 169 thousand citizens and citizens of Ukrainewhile Germany and Poland over a million each.
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