Anne Frank, dressed in a blue dress with a blue and yellow ribbon around her neck, and with a candle in her hand burning the Z symbol of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is the new symbol of the Russia-Ukraine war.
The paper Anne holds in her hand, which is bearing the Z symbol of the Russian invasion forces, reminds the observer of the Nazi swastika.
This new work of street art, named ‘Remember’, presented on a wall in Milan, Italy, is the brainchild of the Italian contemporary pop artist and activist AleXsandro Palombo who’s renowned for his colorful, reflective, and irreverent works that focus on pop culture, society, diversity, inclusion, ethics, and human rights.
The Dutch Jewish girl who became the symbol of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis becomes – in the art of Palombo – an image that invites everyone to remember the horrors of war, whose first victims are precisely the youngest.
The work, as Palombo points out, is not a reference to the tragic events of the Holocaust but a denunciation of the emotional impact of the propaganda war on the spread of hatred and mystification of the truth that today, more than ever, finds space within the mass communication and spreads of social networks.
Palombo wrote on Instagram that we’re witnessing a model of war which influences feelings and public opinion and evolves with multiple means including fake news and propaganda on social networks, stressing that Putin’s ‘denazification’ is a heavy propaganda and mystification operation carried out to justify the barbaric invasion of Ukraine he ordered.
Pointing out that memory is one of the most powerful antibodies that allow us to defend ourselves from the dangers of the present, Palombo pointed out that we must educate the new generations and tell them what happened – without filters, bluntly, over and over again – through the memory of facts and terrifying images that reflect the Holocaust horror and the extermination of millions of people.
Palombo, who acquired a name for himself after portraying in 2015 the Simpsons in Auschwitz in the piece called “Never Again”, draw at the beginning of March a street art of Vladimir Putin in a black suit and red tie, with a gun pointed to his temple.
He entitled the work “Russian Roulette. The Tsar’s Suicide” but the art was removed in a very short time, prompting Palombo to comment that Vladimir Putin’s repressive and censorious action apparently also affects Milan.
Be the first to comment