The Blue Bird is a philosophical play written by Belgian philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Maurice Maeterlinck. Two children are set on a quest to find a blue bird in the Land of Memory, the Palace of Night, the Forest. They do not find the blue bird, but wake up and discover it was all a dream. After many adventures, they find it in their own backyard.

Europe has a few bluebirds in nature, one of them being eastern bluebird, with royal blue on the back and rusty yellow on the breast, the national colors of Ukraine. Depicting the complexity of my heritage spanning across multiple regions, from southwestern Ukraine and early years spent on its Black Sea coast, to the Ural Mountains in central Russia and Asian DNA inherited per Siberian mixture, to adolescence in the northernmost area of Belarus and Chagall’s eponymous L'oiseau Bleu poster above my bed, this piece represents a compilation of mixed visions triggered by death, destruction and suffering caused by war. Bluebird can be found, but peace is for us to find.

Original: Pencil, pigment liner, watercolor, and digital collage.