A Melbourne artist, in South Melbourne, painted a Ukrainian soldier hugging a Russian soldier but after the Ukrainian community described his city as a “profound insult” that de-emphasize the brutal incursion of their land so he wants to remove his painting.
Peter Seaton is a Melbourne artist with a CTO nickname, who created the mural on Kings Way entitled Peace Before Pieces was demonstrated this week.
Local Ukrainian described that painting as a rapist hugging a victim while the crime is still happening and so It caused the Ukrainians to be upset. Seaton on Sunday said he would remove the mural by Monday. Vasyl Myroshnychenko as Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia said “utterly offensive to all Ukrainians” and had requested to remove it.
“The painter has no clue about the [Russian] invasion of Ukraine and it is disappointing to see it done without consulting the Ukrainian community in Melbourne,” he said on Twitter :
1/ A recently unveiled mural in @Melbourne showing a RU and a UA soldier hugging is utterly offensive to all Ukrainians. The painter has no clue about the RU invasion of Ukraine and it is disappointing to see it done without consulting the Ukrainian community in Melbourne. pic.twitter.com/TCG6s7W9SJ
— Vasyl Myroshnychenko (@AmbVasyl) September 3, 2022
Before the mural was painted Art 4 Ukraine Australia said it had been in touch with Seaton, he had continued with the concept “regardless of our pleas for a reason”.
“Peter had presented this piece to our team, who explained the insensitive nature of the image and that the message was inappropriate,” the group said.
to “merely portray an image supporting peace worldwide,” the artist collective asked Seaton to remove the Ukrainian and Russian flags on the mural.
In response, Seaton said the primary feedback about the painting was positive but after a while when the committee discussed more, they believed maybe this work describe as “offensive”
“I had to get behind a message of peace, that’s always what I’m about,” he said.
Liana Slipetsky as Noble Park Association of Ukrainians in Victoria branch president said for the first time that she saw the mural, she didn’t have a good feeling about it and she felt embarrassed to erect this in Australia.
“What would Ukrainian refugees think of that? They’ve just sought safe haven here and then that mural’s in their face? What is that saying to them about Australians?” she said.
“We need to keep Ukraine front of mind, but in doing so, we need to be telling the truth and to me, this is just like Russian propaganda.”
Season said that he is so upset that made a bad feeling in the Ukrainian community and also he didn’t want to excuse Russian acts of aggression.
He believes that the purpose of the mural is a “message of peace” and he had not any affiliations with the Russian community.
“If you’re going to fault me on anything, it’s that I have some crazy, pie-in-the-sky hippie ideas around unity and that we’re all one.”
Seaton was selling 12 NFTs of the mural. before the world explodes NFT video defines the mural as being bombed by a mushroom cloud.
0.08 of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, or around $124 is the value of this artwork. On Instagram Seaton said all benefits of the sale of the NFTs would be given to World Beyond War.
Seaton said artwork wants to be painted after selling all the Videos NFTs more than once.
a lecturer in digital cultures at the University of Sydney, Dr. Olga Boichak, said the impression created inaccurate equality between the “unprovoked, unwarranted, unilateral aggression of Russia” and Ukraine. She said Russia repeatedly tried to occupy and inhabit Ukraine so this image can make a harmful description that the countries are “brotherly nations”.
“There have been many instances where our language and culture has been limited, where people have been executed, and where genocide has happened… This hug is a chokehold,” Boichak said.
A new mural in Melbourne shows a Russian & a Ukrainian soldier hugging & it’s deeply offensive to all Ukrainians. Russia’s war in Ukraine is not a conflict between two nations – it is an invasion. The mural creates a sense of a false equivalency btw the victim & the aggressor 1/5 pic.twitter.com/QsU7wvu6qr
— Olga Boichak(@olgarithmic) September 3, 2022
“That’s what makes this mural problematic … Ukraine is not in the position to lay down weapons and stop fighting.”
Stefan Romaniw from The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations said according to a reasonable incorrect description that the world needed peace.
“What would people think if a mural featured a rapist and a victim hugging? Wouldn’t that offend any decent person’s conviction that to ask a victim to excuse their rapist while the crime is still occurring, not been acknowledged, and not been atoned for, is wrong?”
Leave this field empty if you're human:
