“The destruction of my mural in Mariupol was planned, so it didn’t surprise me. Even as I was doing it I knew it would have a limited duration. In fact, if anything it lasted much longer than it was planned, because they told me it would go away almost immediately. Perhaps, at this point, they purposely made it last longer”. The street artist said this in an interview with Adnkronos Jorit, which comments on the videos and images circulating on social media and depicting the beginning of the ‘destruction’ of the mural that the Neapolitan artist created in the city of Mariupol. The work, which occupies the entire facade of a building in the city in the south-east of Ukraine, has been at the center of much controversy: it represents the face of a little girl from Donbass, with the colors of the Russian flag painted in the irises and surrounded by two missiles with the writing NATO.
“Even if it will now be destroyed, the mural certainly served to turn the spotlight on and raise the issue – explains the artist, born Ciro Cerullo -. I am proud that we talked about the children of Donbass and its citizens, who are excluded from any political decision, they are not considered at all as entities, their will is completely excluded, as if they do not exist. They do not want to be with Kiev. The works of art are sometimes like fires, the wind spreads them and even if are turned off, they still served some purpose.” Now that the mural will no longer be there, “I would like to do another one, if the conditions are right. But it was already very difficult to do that one, we did it in really precarious conditions, we slept in a shelter with displaced people, in among the cockroaches. A heavy thing, I don’t know if it would be possible to do another one, but if it were possible I would do it again.”
Finally, Jorit makes a more general reflection: “I take this opportunity to underline that all children in wars should always be considered -he says-. In these last years of war I read that 220 Ukrainian children died, and in Gaza in the space of a few months almost 11 thousand died. There is as always a double standard: some children are more important than others, some are used for geopolitical interests, others do not matter and it is as if they did not exist. This should never happen again”, is Jorit’s warning.