“The war is not over yet. It has crawled into our everyday landscape,” says
Russian-born artist Kuril Chto.

Living in exile from his birthplace of Saint Petersburg, the artist says he founded and curated the Museum of Street Art there but his criticism of the annexation of Crimea and his exhibition of a Ukrainian artists’ works in the museum forced him to abandon the project. Here in the streets of Lisbon, Portugal, he carries the daily topic of war wherever he goes.

One year since this war between Russian and Ukraine began, Kuril Chto says that he is afraid that the constant news about the war is now becoming normalized for the average person, causing them to care less. His new piece in the Graça neighborhood of Lisbon is meant to convey the quotidian quality of this horror by depicting the most mundane of home laundry tools, a drying rack. So familiar that it becomes invisible. A passerby may not make a note of the wall illustration until they consider the military uniform that is hanging on it.

“This intrusive element in the midst of mundanity is a mass-produced object employed in the mass production of death,” he says. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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