I don’t normally watch Ukraine’s Got Talent but this winning performance by Kseniya Simonova will blow your mind (and possibly make you cry). She used sand on a giant lightbox to dramatize the German invasion of Ukraine in World War II and though that sounds bizarre and abstract it’s actually a really amazing work of art that’s totally worth watching.
Nice to see new ways of thinking and learning about the Holocaust that aren’t just testimonials and pictures of concentration camps.
(The video is long, but watch at least until the 2:00 mark and you won’t be able to stop).
!['The Cossacks' Reply to the Sultan (Zaporozhtsy)', c1890, (1939). 'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey', also known as 'Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto', 19th-century imagining of a supposed historical event of 1676, based on the legend of Cossacks sending an apparently rude and insulting reply to an ultimatum from Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire. 'On the right is Taras Bulba (in a white cap), the hero of Gogol's tale of the same name; on the left is Andrei, Taras Bulba's son; almost in the centre sits Ataman (Chief) Serko with a pipe in his mouth'. Ilya Repin (1844-1930) took nearly 20 years to paint the picture, for which Tsar Alexander III paid him 35,000 rubles, at the time the greatest sum ever paid for a Russian painting. In the collection of The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia. From "The Russian State Museum". [State Art Publishers, Moscow and Leningrad, 1939]](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/GettyImages-1085305746-430x245.jpg)
