A mother cooks 6 peas and a shoe for her children – this heartbreaking story is part of the exhibition Hunger by Bessarabian Bulgarian artist Yona Tukuser.

The exhibition opened in the European Parliament building with images and documents from the Holodomor during three periods in the history of Ukraine - 1921-1923, 1932-1933 and 1946-1947. The artist also draws parallels with Russia’s current war against Ukraine. The exhibition comes at the invitation of MEP Andrey Kovatchev. The Ukrainian-Bulgarian artist is presenting the result of 14 years of work in paintings, an installation of a Russian drone, and video memories by people who have been through this horror. Yona Tukuser has studied the state archives and talked to Holodomor survivors. “The title of each painting is the title of a document I have found. I experienced each and every story and I recreated it – in art form,” she says, in an interview with the BNR’s correspondent in Brussels Anguelina Piskova. 
The tragic past is reflected in the present. 

This can be seen in the installation with the authentic burnt grain after a Russian missile attack against a grain warehouse at a Danube port last year.

The exhibition also tells the story of 6-year old Ilya who lost his mother two years ago and had to hide in a bomb shelter, but hunger drove him to eat his friend’s teddy bear. This painting was sent to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague as proof of Russia’s crimes against humanity. “The stories will be repeated for as long as humans refuse to grasp the truth. The truth is so cruel. We must be brave and look the truth in the eye,” says Yona Tukuser. 

Photos courtesy of Yona Tukuser, Anguelina Piskova