A number of sacred Polovtsian statues generally known as stone babas, courting from the ninth to the thirteenth century, have been destroyed throughout Russia’s six-month occupation of Izyum. A strategic metropolis within the Kharkiv area, Izyum was liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on 10 September. Tons of of mass graves have been additionally discovered, underscoring requires expenses of struggle crimes towards Russia.
On 18 September, the artwork historian and journalist Oksana Semenik, who posts beneath the Twitter deal with Ukrainian Artwork Historical past, posted photos of the stone babas on Mount Kremenets earlier than and after the occupation, spurring comparisons to terrorist organisations. “Jogs my memory of the Taliban destroying Buddha’s statues in Afghanistan,” wrote one commenter in response to Semenik’s tweet. “Similar to ISIS destroyed Palmyra,” wrote another. Nevertheless, it has not been established who was chargeable for the destruction of the monuments.
In her put up, Semenik additionally described the sacred significance of the stone babas: “Sanctuaries with effigies have been a spot for performing the memorial cult of ancestors, in a roundabout way associated to burials.” Polovtsian is one other title for the Turkic Cuman nomads who populated the realm.
She additionally famous that “most of the Polovtsian [stone] girls depict males”. Whereas “baba” means grandmother in Ukrainian, in reference to the statues it “comes from the Turkic phrase ‘balbal’ that means ‘ancestor’ or ‘grandfather’” and so stone babas “painting each female and male figures.” They’re additionally known as kurgan stelae.
As a part of Arsenale 2012, the primary Kyiv Worldwide Biennale of Up to date artwork, the cultural venue Mystetskyi Arsenal featured an exhibition of almost 100 genuine stone babas titled Historical kinds: a Trendy Level of View. A variety of these got here from museums which can be presently in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, resembling Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The objective of the stone babas exhibition on the biennial was to current Ukraine’s inventive heritage “as a major and equal a part of the world cultural achievement,” wrote Artwork Ukraine journal defined in 2012.
Tymur Bobrovskyy, a Ukrainian archeologist, identified in a Fb put up this week following the outcry that the stone babas have been destroyed on 24 March and in April have been listed in Tradition Crimes, the Ukrainian tradition ministry’s on-line database of cultural heritage destruction brought on by the Russian invasion, “however for some motive nobody was till now”, he wrote. Kateryna Chueva, Ukraine’s deputy minister of Tradition and Data Coverage, commented on Bobrovskyy’s put up that the ministry will quickly obtain new images from the positioning.
In 2016, Ukraine’s official Twitter account posted the Izyum statues with the hashtag #BeautifulUkraine and in contrast them to one of many world’s most well-known monuments: Surprise what Ukraine and Easter Island have in widespread? Their stone babas!”
