As the war in Ukraine enters into its fifth year, Manchester central library commemorates the war through the Bridge of Sunflowers campaign, a new art exhibition depicting the experiences of war from the perspective of Ukrainian children.

The exhibition is comprised of works made by young Ukrainian artists living in the city of Lviv alongside creative responses made by young people living in Manchester.

Participating artists were supported primarily through the sunflower dreams project, a non-profit organisation which hosts artistic workshops for children living in Ukraine and showcases their work in numerous cities across Europe and North America.

The artworks within the exhibition aim to explore the ‘impacts of the ongoing conflict, as well as the hopes and dreams of those who live through it’.

The artworks displayed highlight the contradictions of living as a civilian in warzones as the joy and beauty of everyday life is juxtaposed next to the harsh realities of war. Idyllic depictions of the artists’  homes and culture are intruded upon by images of bombs and destroyed buildings, signifying the loss of innocence and theft of life felt by those living in conflict zones.

The fact that the paintings are done by children remains poignant; those whom are expected to be the most protected from the harsh realities of the world have now become the people who are most knowledgeable of it.

Each artwork is accompanied by a brief description of the artist’s background and the subject matter, highlighting how the images in the pieces are not hypothetical; they represent the world that the artist actually experiences.

The exhibition is hosted primarily in the Wolfson Reading Room on the first floor of Manchester central library, with a smaller section of the exhibit being hosted on the ground floor. In this exhibit, the use of this space serves to reinforce the core emotions of the artworks.

As the artworks depict the imposition of war onto the regular life of the artist within their subject matter the decision to integrate the exhibition into a shared communal space transfers this experience onto the viewer. Just as Ukrainian citizens cannot simply separate daily life from war, neither can we.