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A giant Putin portrait is on display and it's made from bullet shells
There is no other portrait quite like it anywhere else in the world.
By Melissa Mahtani
January 25, 2018
The Face of War
It's a striking image. A 7-foot-tall portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin made from bullet shells. The piece is on display as part of an exhibition that opened in New York on Thursday -- and it's meant to be a sobering reminder of the horrors of war. The shells are all from the 2014 Ukrainian uprising known as the Maidan Revolution, one of the bloodiest European conflicts since the early 1990s. And the two Ukrainian artists who created the portrait fiercely believe Putin is to blame for the violence that tore apart the eastern part of their country. "Russia tried to pull us into the USSR," Daniel Green, one of the artists said. "It was a line between democracy or totalitarianism." Both Green and his fellow artist, Daria Marchenko, took part in the uprising. Green said several of his friends were killed in the fighting. That's what gave him the idea of using spent bullets to symbolize what was happening.
He and Marchenko had worked together in the past and decided to create a piece that would draw attention to the horrors of the conflict. The pair started work on Putin's portrait in February 2015. In the beginning, the bullets came from their network of friends who'd taken part in the war. But as word spread, the pair was inundated with remnants from the war. "We had thousands and thousands of shells all over the place," Marchenko said. "There were splinters of bombs lying in the bathroom, in the kitchen, everywhere." The portrait, known as "The Face of War," is the signature piece of the "Five Elements of War" exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York. "Culture is a weapon of peace," Green said. "We try to show through these images how the domination of war is important in the culture of humanity." Added Marchenko: "We want people all over the world to understand how dictatorship works and the tools of manipulation so they can stand up to it."
There is no other portrait quite like it anywhere else in the world.
