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Multilingual magazine has featured many courageous Ukrainians surviving and working during wartime ruary. Working under the worst conditions imaginable, they continue tirelessly collaborating on projects with colleagues from the outside.

Oleksiy Chekal is a Ukrainian graphic designer, calligrapher, and art historian. Incredibly, he lives and works in war-torn Kharkiv. He describes himself as a cross-cultural designer, working with a complex array of areas including museum, scientific, and religious projects, through typography and calligraphy encompassing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac scripts.

I am a painter by training. I moved on to study painting conservation and icon painting. It was sacred art that instilled in me a love of writing and calligraphy. The inscriptions on icons had an unfamiliar aroma of something mysterious. I became interested in paleography and started to study calligraphy on my own. Around the same time, in 2000, I got involved in digital graphic design and joined PanicDesign studio. My extensive experience in this field, rewarding though it was, made me feel I was still lacking something. Gradually I realized that with the knowledge I had gained thanks to my research in other scripts and cultures, it was possible to create a highly specialised niche at the junction of design and science, philology, religion and culture. This led to a wide range of work, from designing exhibitions on Stalin’s purges to the history of the Passover, to church design and calligraphy; from tattoo designs in Greek, to Syriac logos, to historic conference decorations at Oxford, to jewelry designs in Italy, and to Arabic calligraphy for books on Muslim culture.

Because I chose not to work in a corporate setting and freed myself from run-of-the-mill commercial commitments, I gradually developed a worldview close to that of Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda: a long path, in which “The world tried to catch me but didn't succeed.” I travel to different countries, where I find friends and projects. I like to call myself an Itinerant Calligrapher. I like the state of motion. It stopped being a routine and turned into a movable creative feast, which is interesting to me and does not weigh me down.

I work quite a lot in Europe. As a rule, European customers turn to Ukrainian designers because our services are cheaper. In my case, clients come to me precisely because I can solve unusual design problems, where one needs to combine several areas of expertise for solutions with pronounced individuality, not a generic design. I am fascinated by the moment of immersion in a new project, by exploring new themes and styles. It could be Arabic demonology, Balthasar's theological aesthetics, design of a book by the Syrian mystic Isaac of Nineveh, or branding of German castles. Every time I explore the historical and art historical context there is a creative germination of an idea into a graphic solution.

A number of important projects come to mind. For the largest Christian festival in Rimini, Italy I designed exhibitions dedicated to archaeology of Syria, Christian view of the Ukrainian revolution (known as Maidan), persecution of religion in the USSR, and life in Christ of Anthony of Surozh. There was an interesting project to develop a graphic treatment for a sanctuary in Rome, Santuario Madonna del Miracolo (Basilica di Sant'Andrea delle Fratte) and the exhibition on the Madonna of Alfonse Ratisbonne. I collaborated with the Basilica of San Zeno in Verona and did graphic design for churches in Greece. Now I'm working on a series of conferences on theology, sociology, and church art with the Oxford Women's Ministries Initiative and the Center for Applied Theology (CAT) in England. I’ve had several solo exhibitions in Florence, Italy; Montreal, Sicily; Torun, Poland; and Lublin, Poland. I also teach as a visiting professor at the Florence Academy of Classical Arts. (www.artac.org)

At any given moment I may be working on about 20 projects of varying intensity. Before the war began, I was involved in a number of of interesting projects. They included inscriptions in Arabic for a collector's sword, design of a Judeo-Christian-studies monograph by leading scholars of Cambridge and Oxford, a port wine branding for an ancient castle in Germany, and calligraphy of ancient Greek poetry by Sappho. My main project was to design the interior of the military chapel, the Church of St. Yuri (George) the Victorious in Kharkiv. We created a conceptual theological pan behind the cathedral iconography in cooperation with Ukrainian theologians and famous Ukrainian artists. The church was to be not only a symbol of our nation's courage and dignity in the fight against Russian imperialism and a warm place of prayer, but also an innovative art project with experiments in church art that ranged as wide as Ukrainian avant-garde and early Christian asceticism.

For Ukrainians today, subjected to inhuman torture and violence by the occupants, the example of the holy Eastern martyr shows us that dignity and truth can help one stand before death and torture. In the Syriac ancient version of the hagiographic legend of St. George the Vanquisher, the emperor Diocletian is called a serpent (the dragon appeared later). Thus, St. George struggles with the symbol of pagan power and the symbol of hell. But as John Chrysostom says in his Easter sermon:

O death, where is your sting?

O hell, where is your victory?

Christ is risen, and you are cast down!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Russian shells damaged the temple, but we hope that after our victory, we will rebuild it and realize everything we had planned.

No less important a project, perhaps, the work of my life, was the creation of a graphic style for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The work included development of cross-marks, fonts, ornaments, and design guide for dioceses and church products. Setting the aesthetic tone of voice for the national religious organization was a unique opportunity, a wonderful chance to redirect religious consciousness of the Ukrainians away from imperial remnants toward something more democratic, free, and domestic. This historical reversal from Moscow to Constantinople is certainly no less important than the Ukrainians' desire for European values and rights. And we now see that the Russian Orthodox Church supports and endorses the criminal acts of the Russian government, thereby descending into an anti-Christian, infernal worldview.

This is why when the Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew visited Kiev in 2021, I participated in his visit at the invitation of the head of the OCU, Metropolitan Epiphanius, with great enthusiasm. I created a series of sacred topographical images uniting the two cities and two eponymous cathedrals (Sophia of Kiev and Sophia of Constantinople). I am still working on a number of projects for the Ukrainian Church, including creating an NFT platform dedicated to military and refugee aid.

We have strong cultural traditions in Ukraine, including influence of the Greek letters on our alphabet. We have also absorbed the spirit of European artistic experience. In contrast to the European conventions, our letters are somewhat livelier and less of an exact science that the “hallowed” Latin letters tend to be. Ukrainian writing includes emotional details and a certain dynamism of form, often associated with Middle-Eastern culture. This is reflected in the appearance of our traditional cursive writing, which continues to this day. The pillars of Ukrainian design, from Heorhiy Narbut to Vasyl Krychevsky, incorporated this tradition into their creative vision. Avant-garde, futuristism, and Constructivism have also been transplanted onto the Ukrainian soil. As a result, a contemporary designer has a wide range of historical inspiration to draw from in their work. I recently described this approach in an article about my design work upon the 100th anniversary of the Kharkiv Academy of Art and Design. (You can read an article about this project here)

One peculiarity of Ukrainian design is an ability to combine individuality with national or supranational contexts while maintaining some idiosyncrasies. This is important since in pursuit of relevance and staying current, it is possible to lose sight of depth and timelessness. As Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan reminds us: "God sympathizes with outsiders."

I see the designer's task in developing empathy and an understanding of the “other.” Neither to selfishly promote one's own vision, nor to subserviently do the client's bidding, but to achieve a kind of creative collaboration between the artist and the client, and to create layers of meaning in both aesthetics and content of the work. This is what makes a project profound and meaningful in my opinion. I would call it “design that touches the human heart.”

I aspire to demonstrate that through design, one can generate meanings of social consequence, with visual statements relevant to the place and the challenges of time. This process allows one to return to the awareness of the tradition, aesthetics, and national melody of the soul. And once one found a unique personal voice, it is that voice that is interesting, not the rehashes of other people's voices and meanings. As Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus said: "An artist is needed by his people and the whole world only when his art merges with the outcry of his nation.”

The first time I thought about interfaith and intercultural dialogue was when I visited excavations at Dura Europos. This is a small town on the edge of empires and between eras. It existed in a peaceful neighbourhood of different mindsets. Moreover, there are theories that the paintings in the Synagogue, the Temple of the Palmyrene Gods, and the Christian Baptistery were painted, if not by the same artists, then artists of the same circle, very close in style and technique.

Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote in his Theo-Aesthetics that beauty can pass bounds and create connections where people and ideas do not agree. Orthodox philosopher and theologian David Hart clarifies that beauty levels our differences, casts doubt on them, and demonstrates the harmony of the universe. Likewise, Israeli researcher Shlomo Pines studies the paradigms of mutual influence through aesthetics in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Thus, undoubtedly, beauty is a unifying principle.

On that topic, a quote from the Bible might be helpful:

“God gives beauty to Japheth and he dwells in tents of Shem, and Canaan is servant to him.” (Genesis 9:27)

I’ve often seen calligraphers and artists from different religious and cultural communities find common ground faster than theologians. Perhaps that’s why Catholic priests, Orientalists, rabbis, and researchers of Muslim sects contact me for design work. And I am already trying through my work to show the multicultural, multilingual, and ultimately universally human nature of any creative endeavor.

Given that I’m not a philologist or a polyglot, my view of different scripts and languages is a bit unusual. I deal with letters like a dyslexic artist, studying their anatomy, character, and structure depending on the writing tool and style of the form. Of course, I don't work blindly and can read what is written in Syriac or Greek, but I always consult with my philologist friends so that I don't make mistakes. I don't put anything together on purpose. There are specific orders. For example, in one academic book about the Christian East, my friend had to design inscriptions in Ethiopian, Syriac, Greek, Georgian, and Slavonic letters. I found a common graphic solution for these different alphabets.

My interest in the Middle East was born after my trips to Syria, Turkey, and Israel. Through the study of Byzantine art, I immersed myself in more ancient history, trying to understand the continuity of cultures. And the inscriptions and images of funerary portraits in the abandoned city of Palmyra so interested me that I even decided to study the influence of Hellenistic sacred art on the formation of the early Christian canon. Last year I gave the world's first workshop on Palmyra calligraphy. These Aramaic letters, slightly influenced by Roman inscriptions, have not been used for over 1,700 years. No Palmyra inscriptions on soft materials (paper, papyrus) have survived, only on the stones of buildings and on funerary portraits. I had to reconstruct the movement of the pen and the logic of lettering, so that scientists could better understand how the graphemes were constructed in this alphabet.

As a calligrapher, it is very important for me to study the entire cauldron of Middle Eastern scripts, to build aesthetic bridges between cultures, to design scientific publications as a designer, or to make calligraphic compositions.

An important part of the quest for multilingualism the school of Semitic languages at the Ostroh Academy. Some of the best teachers of Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopian from different countries gathered there. Another important element to some of my successes in this field was the Orientalist Publishing House Gorgias Press (Piscataway, NJ). I created an elaborate spiral in the style of Estrangello's Syriac writing, telling the story of that publishing house's creation.

I am currently working on a multiscript font for scientific publications, where the plasticity of the European and Oriental scripts are in harmony with the texts on the book page. This problem is very topical — just look at a book with quotations in Greek, Church Slavonic, Hebrew, and Arabic to see the lack of proportional combination. We should take a lesson from 17th- and 18th-century printing houses, when a scientific publication was a work of art, not just a sterile, boring, unaesthetic rendering of the text.

It turns out I can work under any conditions. Here's a funny example. My eldest son filmed our family during the start of the war and the evacuation, capturing the frightened faces of his parents, the nervous movements of my wife, the dog and cat who stopped fighting with each other. The photos, which he posted on Facebook, were picked up by journalists from New York Magazine. That famous magazine printed them, but I'm the only one not in there. Because, as Peter said, "Dad looks the same all the time: shells fly — he works. Shells don't fly — he works."

It seems to me that the living response of authentic art to war can express itself in different ways. Some are like Picasso painting the Guernica or like Dante referring to political opponents in Hell. And some are to the contrary, creating complex and vague allegorical images, like J. R. R. Tolkien. His response to World War II was not direct, but The Lord of the Rings is an example of the deepest understanding of the nature of evil within a fictional world. It seems to me that this war has mobilized creative forces in Ukrainian art.

I'm focusing on projects with an immediate benefit during the war. An example is the Lviv Municipal Gallery, which helps organize jobs and communication for refugees in Lviv. I make designs for military chevrons, design airborn leaflets to be scattered on occupied territories, and logos for charity projects to help refugees (in Ukraine, Poland, England, and other countries). As a designer, I help the Ukrainian-Swiss and Ukrainian-Austrian projects, dedicated to strengthening the Ukrainian identity in Europe.

A portion of the money I earn from international commissions I try to invest in ammunition for our defenders or vehicles for territorial defense. This is of course insanely small in the face of the invasion. And the feeling of guilt and powerlessness doesn't leave me. Recently, my friend and great calligrapher Brody Neuenschwander invited me to participate in A Brush with Silence project, where calligraphers from all over the world will write texts in support of Ukraine. And I will soon be giving a lecture at The Typophiles, one of the most authoritative design societies in America.

When I went to Europe 10 years ago, many Italians or Englishmen could not understand why Kyiv or Kharkiv was not Russia. Now the situation has drastically changed, but it has cost us the blood and lives of our compatriots. We have been fighting for our history and identity for about 1,000 years. Unfortunately, the image of Ukraine as a part of Russia has been formed for centuries. But it is not so. Much has been stolen from us, and now our task in the eyes of the world community is to return the names and events to where they should be. St. Vladimir baptized Kyivan Rus, the future Ukrainians; and the Moscow duchy has nothing to do with it. The Church of St. Sophia of Kyiv and the Gospel of Ostromir appeared when there were marshes in Moscow, and Kazimir Malevich or Vladimir Tatlin were Ukrainian artists, not representatives of the Russian avant-garde.

The only request to people of different countries is to take interest in the history and culture of Ukraine. It will enrich your horizons and help us in our struggle and in the creation and restoration of the country.

Ukrainians have realized that they live in a very cool country that is not afraid to call evil what it truly is and stand for civilizational peace, without ideological temptations and bureaucratic squabbles. For me, all the events of recent years are not simply a war between Russia and Ukraine over land and the post-Soviet insecurities of their neighbors, but a battle of archetypes and worldviews, a conflict of different community perceptions of freedom, conscience, and power. And we have been over this many times in the history between our countries: the genocide in Baturin in 1708, the treacherous destruction of the Zaporizhian Sich by Catherine II in 1775, the crimes of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet-Ukrainian war of 1917–1918, the Holodomor in 1932–33 were all no less cruel than the recent massacre in Bucha or bombing of Mariupol. The cruelty and dehumanization of Russia has historical roots and logic in its formation.

Unfortunately, the line of such great Russian thinkers as Chaadayev, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Vladimir Voinovich has always been marginal in Russia, not mainstream. Osip Mandelstam, Mother Maria (Skobtsova) and Daniil Andreyev existed not thanks to, but in spite of, the general Russian path. And many cultural figures and writers fueled this toxic imperial narrative.

It is under the bombing and suffering of Ukrainians that another type of society is born: not vertical, but horizontal; not bureaucratic, but free. A society of intelligence and humor, a kind of European type of thinking, unafraid of dictator’s threats or material difficulties. Every Ukrainian now has many functions: business, creativity, and protection of his land.

This is a new type of thinking, when you do not wait for handouts from anyone (neither from the state, nor from institutions, nor from the church), but with your friends, you help the country and the people for the glory of God. When you yourself take full responsibility for the creation of history. The figure of the free Cossack/artist/entrepreneur rolled into one has entered the arena. And when almost the entire country has such creative freedom-loving spirit, it is impossible to defeat it or bring it to its knees!v