From War to Art: Navigating Life Between Two Worlds
Nothing is in insurmountable, if you’re open to finding a way through.
One way through is to find refuge in what you love. Love helps you stay grounded in the present, and keeps hope alive.
It can also give you the strength to navigate even the most traumatic circumstances, as it did for Liia Dmytrenko, one of the millions of victims of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and of the ensuing war, now in its 5th year. At just 19 years of age, she has already lived through more fear, uncertainty, and upheaval than many of us experience in a lifetime.
“When my life turned upside down”, she says, “I quickly realised what mattered most was not what I owned but the people I loved.”
Soon after Kyiv came under attack, Liia and her family escaped to western Ukraine. Three months later, she and her mother made their way to the UK. And with barely any English, Liia joined a top school in her GCSE year. Her mother returned to Kyiv to support the war effort.
Liia’s move to the UK deprived her of her voice. Lacking the vocabulary to express what she was really feeling, she found a path to self-expression through art: sketching scenes of Kyiv from memory.
During her short visits home she captured her observations of the war in Kyiv through a series of photographs that became the subject of a school exhibition inviting people to imagine their reactions to actually being there. This work was also featured in an ITV documentary.
Today, Liia’s in the second year of a graphic design course at Oxford Brookes University. She’s learning to live a “double life”: lectures, parties, and relative safety in Oxford; danger, fear, and drones exploding outside her window in Kyiv.
Her creativity has become both a lifeline and a vehicle in which to process the trauma of war and displacement, and find stability and meaning in it all.
She cannot escape the fear. Instead, she chooses to believe in the future.
This episode will help you
- Understand how to find stability and meaning when everything you’ve built suddenly disappears.
- Discover how creativity can become a lifeline for processing trauma and reconnecting with yourself.
- Learn to hold conflicting realities simultaneously without letting fear paralyse your forward momentum.
Highlights
- [00:00:00] Introduction
- [00:02:14] The Day War Began
- [00:03:58] Leaving Everything Behind
- [00:07:53] Escaping Kyiv
- [00:10:00] A New Path Beyond Ballet[00:14:12] A Mother’s Blessing
- [00:21:49] Arriving in the UK
- [00:30:17] Finding a Voice Through Art
- [00:35:21] Living a Double Life
- [00:42:16] Fearless Forward
- [00:43:03] Closing Reflections
Resources
