Sculptures by French artist "in homage to Ukrainian resistance" on kyiv postage stamps

Ukrainian Post will put on sale on Monday, on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Russian invasion , a series of stamps reproducing sculptures installed in Kiev by French street artist James Colomina in "tribute to the Ukrainian resistance" . Under the title Art vs War , the three stamps depict a boy stenciling the Ukrainian trident on a wall of the Kiev Post Office, a dove holding a branch, and a child wearing a war helmet swinging under a bridge in the Ukrainian capital, three works by the Toulouse artist, can be seen on the Ukrainian Post website .

Printed in 109,600 copies in reference to the fact that Monday is the ^1,096th day of the war triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the stamps will be officially presented Monday at the Kiev Post, the latter announced in a press release. The series is also "dedicated" to the ^11th anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian war which began on February 20, 2014 with the invasion of Crimea . "Since then, for eleven years, the Ukrainian people have resisted Russian aggression," adds the press release from the Ukrainian Post obtained by AFP.

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A committed artist, James Colomina had already denounced the "absurdity" of the war in Ukraine by means of a statue of Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting astride a miniature tank, which he installed in children's playgrounds in Paris, London and New York. "My works have always been made to impose themselves in public spaces, but seeing them travel through stamps is another form of silent revolt," he explained to AFP.

He had traveled to Kiev in August 2024, he said, to "put his stone in the building" of the return to peace. For two weeks, he installed his works after sunset, while "bomb alerts sounded every night" . He said he was "honored" that the Ukrainian Post had chosen to reproduce his sculptures, made of red resin, his trademark. For the first anniversary of the conflict, in February 2023, a stamp reproduced a work by the British graffiti artist Banksy , in which a young judoka knocks an adult man to the mat, an allegory of Ukraine defeating Russia, painted on a ruined building near Kiev.