Unique icons on ammo boxes presented in St. Sophia Cathedral

On Saturday, the Saint Sophia Cathedral in the capital of Ukraine hosted a presentation of icons painted by two Kyivan artists on boards of ammunition boxes to commemorate fallen defenders of Ukraine.

The authors of the series of 11 icons, Oleksandr Klymenko and Sonya Atlantova, called it “Sophia Deisis” and dedicated it to the warriors of three brigades of the Kyiv region’s Territorial Defense who gave their lives to save their country.

Following brief introductions by the artists and event organizers, Oleksandr read the names of fallen Territorial Defense warriors, and Sonya wrote the names on the icons. During this time, the space under the ancient Cathedral vault was filled with divine music performed by the Chorea Kozacky band led by renowned kobzar, banduryst and lirnyk Taras Kompanichenko.

According to Klymenko, the idea of creating the Sophia Deisis series goes back a year ago, when the Russians were fleeing Kyiv Oblast. At the time, Oleksandr was a driver with the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital (PFVMH). They came to just-liberated Borodyanka, where he saw ammunition boxes left by the Russians – Wagnerites, as he was told. He took the boxes home.

“It occurred to me then that we could produce a series of works dedicated to our Territorial Defense brigades,” he told the Ukrainian World Congress. “For me, our Territorial Defense warriors are a symbol of self-sacrifice. The people who were not military yesterday, who were jokingly called ‘intellectuals with wooden guns,’ stopped the professional Russian army. Stopped in essence with their bodies, their lives. As a PFVMH driver, I saw how they acted with my own eyes.”

The idea took shape in December, and the artists took brushes. The last icon of the series was finished just hours before the presentation.

“So our general idea of painting icons on weaponry boxes – the transformation of death (symbolized by these boxes) into life (traditionally symbolized by icons in Ukrainian culture) – has become hyper-symbolic since we used the deadly boxes brought to Ukraine by the Russian aggressors,” said Oleksadr.

According to him, the Sophia Deisis icons will become part of the Cathedral’s exhibit collection, at least for some time. The Cathedral can buy the icons and have them forever. Another option is that a benefactor would buy the icons for the Saint Sophia Cathedral. “In any case, this series won’t be put up for sale like our other icons.”

“The receipts from the sold icons will go to families of those fallen,” Klymenko said. “There are many such families needing support – with two or three children, elderly parents.”

Earlier works by the artists preserved the texture of the ammo boxes’ boards, but for the Sophia Deisis, they used blue levkas. “First, we are always in a creative search,” says Sonya Atlantova. But the main point was that we wanted our icons to match the style of the frescoes on the Saint Sophia Cathedral’s walls – because these icons were intended for this Cathedral.”

She explained that the selection of icons was dictated by the series being the Diesis – the saints praying for all the people on Judgement Day. “The order of icons has long been established by tradition: Jesus Christ in the center, Holy Mother and John the Baptist next to Him, then Archangels and then selected saints. We selected Military Saints – of course, Saint George and Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica, and also Boris and Gleb, the first saints canonized in Kyivan Rus.”

The idea to paint classic Byzantine icons on ammunition boxes belongs to Oleksandr Klymenko. In the fall of 2014, he, his wife Sonya, and several other artists organized an exhibition in support of the Main Military Clinical Hospital of Ukraine. The exhibits included conventional icons. Some icons were sold, including a few to be given as a present to the Sich battalion. Oleksandr was one of those invited to the battalion for the ceremony. There, he saw piles of used AKM ammo boxes and noted that the boards of these boxes looked very much like the boards on which he and Sonya painted icons.

Since then, exhibitions of the icons on ammo boxes have been held in a great number of countries on both sides of the Atlantic – 50 shows just within a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The most recent one opened in Latvia two days ago.

Many presentations of the icons were accompanied by Taras Kompanichenko, alone or with his band.

“Oleksandr always tries to dive deeper and wants that such acts of sacral creation would be accompanied by proper sacral music – to achieve, so to say, syncretism of arts,” says Taras. “It is not a concert but cocreation, so we must delicately feel one another. Here, we perform non-liturgical but still sacral compositions of both old and contemporary Ukrainian musical art. We have to link the present-day torments of the killed and wounded Ukrainian heroes with the Passion of Christ. We say, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, by death he trampled death.’ And our heroes trampled death by death – for Ukraine to rise and live. The Ukraine we dream of.”