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Hi! My name is Nina. I'm from Kharkiv. From the very beginning of the full scale war in Ukraine, when I only tried to overcome anxiety and despair, I was following the activities of many people, who started doing smart and necessary things such as helping each other, organizing, volunteering, evacuating. Not to mention the military defenders on the first line, queues of anybody who were ready to protect barehanded our Motherland to join the territorial defense; as well as rescuers and workers who provided cities with electricity, heating and water despite of cannonades and great risk to their lives. I created this art series about them and called it Nation of Heroes.

First days I stayed in a frozen shock. I tried to adapt myself to a new reality, to understand what I have do for surviving, I was looking for a shelter, was overcoming horror by reading the news. I had never read so much news in my life before.

Only after three days I came to understanding that I can do the only thing I am good at — to draw, to make art. And it was the real necessity to avoid madness about what had been happening.

It wasn’t easy to start because drawing seemed to be ill-timed and ill-placed, and it demanded visual emphasizing of patriotism and I’m not so good at such things. So, I decided to do something simple, something that I had done many times before — to draw my favorite hero, the Fox, who had to enter the reality of war. And unlike me, Fox was ready to resist the enemies.

As for the hero, for some reason my mother chose foxes as something like a family totem, a spirit animal. She was telling me fairy tales about the magical Mountain Forests country where animals were living like people. There were different animals but primarily foxes. Later I was imagining and drawing my tales about this country. So these foxes take a huge part in my artwork since childhood. The heroes in the format of the series have born with my younger sister, with whom we have 23 years age difference. My sister was named Alesya and she also immediately became a Fox (a short for Alesya is Lesya, which sounds similar to Lisa, which means fox in Ukrainian.)

I really want my foxes to help Ukraine, therefore I’m looking for any ways of cooperating and patronage. Foxes can be printed on clothes, textile and consumer goods as well as

used as illustrations and posters.

Here is the series Nation of Heroes.