BEIJING — China has so far refused to condemn its ally
Russia’s war, but Chinese painter Huang Rui is convinced that Ukraine has
already won.
اضافة اعلان
The artist told AFP he paused his other projects to
dedicate himself to a work about
Ukraine after hearing the news of its invasion
on February 24.
“Absence of Black Moon” was finished three days
later and presented at an event organized by the Ukrainian and Polish embassies
in
Beijing on Friday.
The event, called “Together for Peace”, was attended
by multiple diplomats in a country where the authorities refuse to use the word
“invasion” to describe the events in Ukraine.
Huang was one of the pioneers of the Chinese
avant-garde movement in the 1980s and a member of the same loose collective as
artist Ai Weiwei.
His latest work depicts the yellow and blue
Ukrainian flag sliced into quarters by lines of red and white, meant to
represent
Russia. At the canvas’ center is a dark circle, a reference to the “I
Ching” or Book of Changes — an ancient Chinese text.
Huang said he had applied the principles of the “I
Ching” to the military situation and concluded that victory for Kyiv was
inevitable.
“It’s black, but in fact there’s already hope. When
one sees it, they know that even at the most somber moment, Ukraine has already
won,” the artist told AFP.
“At the moment,
Ukraine is in the depths of night. But it is on its own soil; it can work,
think, dream.”
Many Western embassies in Beijing have displayed
Ukrainian colors over the past few weeks in a gesture of solidarity.
But a poster outside the Canadian embassy with the
country’s flag and a message of support on it was vandalized with anti-
NATO slogans.
China has repeatedly blamed NATO’s “eastward
expansion” for worsening tensions between Russia and Ukraine, echoing the
Kremlin’s prime security grievance, while refusing to criticize
Moscow’s
decision to send troops across the border.
President Xi Jinping urged “maximum restraint” to
avoid a “humanitarian crisis” during a Tuesday video summit with France’s
Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz.
On Friday, Zhanna Leshchynska, charge d’affaires at
the Ukrainian embassy in Beijing, was defiant.
“The Ukrainian people won’t give up. The whole
nation is united in love for our country,” she said.
“Together we will win.”
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