A black plane riddled with bullets: a Japanese artist responded to the tragedy in Moscow

A black plane riddled with bullets: a Japanese artist responded to the tragedy in Moscow

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The work will certainly leave its mark on art history

The first from the world art community to react to the tragedy in Moscow was the Japanese artist, now living in Brooklyn, Sho Shibuya. He used the front page of The New York Times to create his piece. Under the title of the publication, he wrote a black and red abstraction dotted with bullet holes.

Sho Shibuya began his series during the pandemic, when he was stuck at home in isolation. Then he could, like everyone else, follow events through the news “window”, reading the press. He correlated this information with the landscape he observed from home. The artist’s works are two-sided: on the one hand there is news, on the other there is its pictorial interpretation. For the author, the series “began as a simple meditation, born from a sense of unease and observing the contrast between the chaos on the news and the calm outside the window.”

The dedication to the tragedy near Moscow was done in the same way. On one side is a photograph of Crocus City Hall, engulfed in fire, with ambulances and police nearby. Above the photo is a newspaper headline about victims at the canceled concert of the Picnic group. And on the reverse side there is a black plane riddled with bullets with a red glowing reflection.

Over the past thirty years, a number of large-scale terrorist attacks have occurred in the world, the largest of which occurred on September 11, 2001, when more than three thousand people died. Many artists responded to this tragedy, among them the famous Russian nonconformist Dmitry Plavinsky. He painted a large-scale painting, “The 9/11 Apocalypse,” which became the final point of his American period. From the 1990s to 2004 he lived in New York. But after the terrorist attack during which the twin towers collapsed, he decided to return to his homeland. But first he will finish his work, which echoes not only the tragedy of September 11, but also the famous work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder “The Tower of Babel”.

Another famous work dedicated to a terrorist attack was created by the world’s most famous street artist, Banksy. In 2018, an artist made graffiti on the door of the Bataclan music hall, where on November 13, 2015, terrorists opened fire on people who came to the concert. He chose the place for his work not by chance. It was through this emergency exit that many who were at the event that turned into a tragedy were saved. On black metal, he depicted with white paint a sad girl in a hood, reminiscent of a ghost. The “sad girl” was stolen six months later, the door was cut out with a grinder at four in the morning. A year later, under dramatic circumstances, the work was found in Italy. It was later returned to the French.

There are other works that comprehend the horrors of terror. However, there are not many of them. The Japanese artist’s response to the terrorist attack in Moscow, during which more than 150 people died, will certainly leave its mark on art history.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29243 dated March 26, 2024

Newspaper headline:
Painting from bullet holes

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