Berlin's Bode Museum is juxtaposing sculptures from the Middle Ages with contemporary Ukrainian art, including an image of a mother and her child taking refuge from war.On February 2022, the second day of the Russian Invasion in Ukraine, Hungarian journalist Andras Földes photographed a young mother nursing her child in the Kyiv subway. The underground stations of the city had become a refuge for residents of the city. Földes posted the photo of the mother and her child on Instagram and within hours it went viral.

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The photo was used by the artist Maryna Solomennykova, who lives in the southern city of Dnipro, to create her work, "Madonna of Kyiv." Solomennykova said that the woman with her child symbolized all Ukrainian mothers who were hiding in bunkers to save themselves from Russian attacks.

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The "Madonna of Kyiv" received even more attention than the photograph that inspired it. One copy of the painting hangs in a church in Naples and the original can be seen at the exhibition, "Timeless. Ukrainian Contemporary Art in Times of War," at the Bode Museum in Berlin.

The curator, Olesia Sobkovych, is also from Ukraine and chose the creation for the exhibition together with dozens of other contemporary Ukrainian artworks.

Modern Ukrainian art meets the Middle Ages

Located on Museum Island, the doomed Bode Museum is a tempel-like building housing an globally renowned collection of sculptures from the Middle Ages and treasures from the Byzantine Empire.

Over a year ago, shortly before the beginning of the Russian attack, the museum appointed the Ukrainian art historian and critic Olesia Sobkovych as curator. Sobkovych had overseen many exhibitions in her role at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, Kyiv .

The appointment of the new art historian matched the wishes of the museum's heads, who wanted to engage with the subject of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The challenge, however, was to juxtapose contemporary Ukrainian art, with its focus on the first year of war in epic and religious forms, with centuries-old artifacts.

This curatorial structure is made more concrete by the fact that every modern art object has a "double" from the Middle Ages, an artifact that evokes a similar emotion.

In the Middle Ages, it was about "fear, despair, sorrow and death," Paul Hoffman, head of the museum's sculpture collection said.

These were the feelings that Ukrainians experience through the brutal war in their country. Through this connection, artifacts from the Middle Ages come alive once more.

Ukraine's 'Madonna' safe for now

Olesia Sobkovych made authenticity a key criteria for choosing the Ukrainian artworks. She not only thought of established artists but also brought in works by lesser-known creatives, including Maryna Solomennykova.

It is risky to combine art that goes viral on social media with a wooden carving from the Middle Ages. But curator Sobokovych was up to the challenge.

In the "Timeless" exhibition, the "Madonna from Kyiv" enters into dialog with a rare finding from Egypt: a tombstone with the image of a breastfeeding woman from the 4th or 5th century. It is an image that is beyond time.

Meanwhile, the real "Madonna," a woman called Tatjana Bliznjak, who was captured in Földes photograph, reached a safe place in western Ukraine a couple of days after she was captured by Földes' camera.

"Timeless. Contemporary Ukrainian Art in Times of War" runs through March 17, 2024 at the Bode Museum in Berlin

This article was originally written in German.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 23, 2023 07:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).