Igor Gaidai

"Bread of War" by Igor Gaidai

Art Ukraine Gallery presents a new series of works by the famous Ukrainian artist Igor Gaidai – “Bread of War”

“Bread of War” is a new incredibly moving project by the most famous Ukrainian photographer Igor Gaidai. It is a hymn to the sacred aesthetics of Ukrainian bread. Bread has been a symbol of prosperity and grief for Ukrainians for centuries. It is a kind of soft national currency and a litmus test of the country’s balance. So it is no coincidence that the enemy is now seeking to destroy key infrastructure: elevators, ports, logistics routes. Putin’s regime, as the heir to the Chekist regime of the 1930s, is seeking to destroy our people with a new Holodomor and to block the opportunities for those countries that need it. This is the subject of a new series of works by the famous Ukrainian photographer Igor Gaidai, Bread of War, a manifesto to the world about the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bread destroyed during the bombing of elevators across the country and ports in Odesa, hundreds of thousands of hectares of mined and burned fields. This burnt bread of the war is a dedication to the children who were starving to death and had to hide in Mariupol basements for weeks, to the tens of thousands of people in occupied Kherson,” said Natalia Zabolotna, curator of the project and founder of Art Ukraine Gallery.

Ihor Haidai commented on the project as follows: “More than 20 years ago, I developed a series of photographs that was embodied in the project “Space of Ukrainian Bread”. In a small essay accompanying this series, I wrote what I wanted to convey. However, many people suggested exhibiting these photographs in various other contexts, from the artificial Holodomor of the Soviet era to the historical significance of Ukrainian bread-making. During the war, when Nazi Russia invaded Ukraine, I perceived my series differently. I felt the bread I depicted in the Cosmos of Ukrainian Bread series was even closer, connected to our past and our identity. The destruction of Ukrainian grain and bread is part of Russian-style denazification. The enemies feel our creative archetype is unattainable for them, so they want to destroy it.”

Unique works by Ihor Haidai from the Bread of War series, as well as the famous breads from the Space of Ukrainian Bread series. Alongside them are Human Labour, Saman, Truth in the Grain, and his world-famous RAZOM.UA series, the main gem of which is a photo with the legendary Mriya aircraft.