Culture: 426 posts

“One face haunted me for a long time, and I knew that I had to paint it,” says Natalia Satsyk, a Ukrainian artist whose exhibition is currently on display at the St.-Adelbert Abbey in the Dutch town of Egmond-Binnen. The face gazes from her canvases. Sometimes it resembles Congolese masks, elongated and sharply defined. Sometimes it is rendered with bold strokes and dramatic colors. The gender may be obscured, as is the body to which it is attached, and what strikes me the most is the depth of sorrow and the pain I see in its eyes. And also the radiance of hope.

One of the unexpected outcomes of the independence achieved by Ukraine in 1993 is the vibrant art scene. Despite political and economic problems and meager state support, artists gave cities like Lviv, Kyiv and Kharkhiv a vitality they hadn’t experienced since the avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s, a period that produced works by Kazemir Malevich, David Burliuk, Aleksandra Ekster, and other leading futurists. Satsyk is based in Lviv, a town in the western part of Ukraine, and she’s a part of the new, dynamic movement of young artists who are not afraid to take risks and question conventions.

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“Create poetry from the silence of tulips and roses,” wrote poet Allameh Muhammad Iqbal (1877 – 1938), reminding us that out of contemplation arise thoughts and actions. Iqbal is also known as “the spiritual father of Pakistan” and his philosophical treatises are still being widely read and analyzed. But it was his mystical, introspective poetry that I grew to admire for its themes of compassion, love, yearning for knowledge, overcoming divisions and parochial concerns. Any poet whose idea of paradise includes Rumi and Goethe engaged in a conversation is someone I want to know.

From the sensory perspective, Iqbal’s poems are also fascinating. They are full of fragrant references, using aroma as the symbol for the divine, the perfect, and the mystical. But what happens when the source of such perfection is destroyed?

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Brussels has an image problem. Its city planning suffered from an overly strong infatuation with brutalist architecture in the 60s and resulted in stupendously hideous constructions, which include some of the EU buildings. The tug of war between the regional governments–and the arcane laws–leave the city underfunded and disorganized, and construction projects can drag on for years. The bureaucracy is byzantine, and getting mundane things done, like opening a bank account or registering oneself with a commune, often turns into one of the labors of Hercules. The weather also doesn’t win bonus points. “Why on earth Brussels?” asked my mom when I told her that we were moving.

My first impression of Brussels on a freezing winter day was unpromising. I emerged out into the chaotic area near the Gare Centrale and found myself in a grey tinted mash up of 19th century curvy facades and faceless cement boxes. By the time I reached the Grand Place, I had to pass through so many rings of tacky haunts selling cheap souvenirs and touristy trinkets that even the elegance of the Renaissance guild houses inside the central square seemed compromised. Eventually my husband and I made our way to Quai aux Briques, an esplanade dotted by baroque and medieval buildings. We drank hot chocolate as rain darkened the façade of Sainte Catherine church and turned the square into an Impressionist painting–and suddenly the city felt like a place where I could live.

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Out of all holidays, Nowruz and Easter inspire me the most with their promise of rebirth and hope. Nowruz, which means “new day” in Persian, falls on the spring equinox (March 20th in 2016) and is celebrated for the thirteen following days. Often called Persian New Year, it’s an important celebration not only in Iran, but also Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Georgia, India, Turkey, and other lands that were once part of the political or cultural Persian sphere.

I received a glimpse of Nowruz through my Azeri stepmother, although my own explorations directed me further down the path. While today it is by and large a secular event, observed by people of different religions and communities, Nowruz is a 3000 year old holiday with rich symbolism and ties to ancient Zoroastrian traditions. Nowruz contains beautiful, colorful and uplifting elements, a great reason to celebrate it.

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I never met my great-grandmother, Olena. At least, not that I recall. My mother says that she brought me to see her, but I must have been only a few months old, and then a year later Olena slipped on a rubber mat and died of a heart attack. The house where she lived was sold.

We are a family short on artifacts and rich on stories. It’s hard to accumulate anything when fate has consigned you to live in a strip of land that sees one invader after another. In Olena’s life she experienced several revolutions, two wars and two famines. My world was turned upside down simply by traveling in the areas of Ukraine touched by war in 2014, so I can’t imagine what it would have been like to live through the kind of hardship that Olena experienced. According to my mother, Olena coped by writing. Cooking and writing.

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