On Saturday, as Republicans in the US Congress unveiled a stopgap spending measure with no funding for Ukraine, Phil Buehler was installing a 60ft-long, 10ft-tall rebuke. Its title: Irpin, Ukraine: Please Don’t Forget Us.
The artist’s latest monumental public artwork is a photograph of Irpin’s civilian car cemetery and is on display in the Little Ukraine neighbourhood of Manhattan, New York, near the Ukrainian Museum and the St George Ukrainian church, for the rest of the month.
The picture is stitched together from 35 images shot in extremely high resolution during Buehler’s week-long trip to Ukraine in October. It shows in vivid detail the pock-marked remains of civilian cars destroyed by Russian forces. Up close in the cemetery, viewers see the resonantly familiar – steering wheels, seats, children’s toys – juxtaposed with bullet holes and sunflowers painted by local artists.
“It’s not like I composed or framed the picture so there’s a central object,” Buehler, 67, says by phone from his studio in Brooklyn, New York. “Instead there’s just this 60 feet of wrecked cars and so you kind of get to choose what your attention belongs to: is it a stuffed animal or is it bullet holes? The cars are almost life size, the toys are almost life size, the bullet holes are almost life size.
“It’s different than if, say, you watched a video. In a small way sometimes art brings people’s attention to things in a different way – it comes in your head, your consciousness different than a newspaper or just an image would.”
On 6 March last year the Russian military shelled a road used by hundreds of civilians to escape the fighting in Irpin, near Kyiv. Parts of the city were occupied by Russian forces until they were forced out at the end of that month, leaving behind more than 250 dead civilians, a quarter of the 62,000 residents homeless and 70% of infrastructure damaged.
Buehler’s journey to Kyiv took 35 hours, including a 19-hour train trip from Warsaw, Poland. He found a people still united in their resolve. “The ones I saw were very proud of their country,” he recalls. “It was kind of like America after 9/11 where the whole country’s in sync.
“I was travelling around with a photojournalist. He said the main difference is that Ukrainian soldiers are fighting for their homeland, fighting for their country, and the Russians aren’t. Ukrainians get the world’s media, they know what’s happening, whereas the Russian soldiers have no idea.
“There wasn’t a single person that didn’t think they were going to win as America was behind them. You could tell their determination.”
But Buehler’s visit happened to coincide with the news that Hamas had launched a devastating terrorist attack on Israel. People immediately told him of their fear that global interest would shift and leave them in the cold, especially as Ukraine’s counter-offensive struggles to make a decisive breakthrough.
“There’s a news cycle and there’s no victory on the war front. It’s not a stalemate but it’s slowed down and eyes are now turning to Gaza and Israel and they’re going to be forgotten, which is why the piece I made has the subtitle of Please Don’t Forget Us. I hope that it might bring some attention back to the war at this particularly perilous time.”
The White House, along with Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, agree on the need to continue funding Ukraine’s war effort but Republicans in the House are increasingly resistant, insisting that there are other priorities such as US border security.
For his part Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has promised to restore “America first” isolationism and end the war in 24 hours, seen by many as surrendering to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Buehler, an unabashedly political artist, says of his work: “I wish I could install it in DC and challenge some Republicans to come and stand next to it and then tell me now this doesn’t involve us, this isn’t important for us. If they push funding out of the spending bill, Putin will be beside himself loving it. The situation in Gaza would be tiny compared to if Putin spills into Poland next.”
He adds: “Russia’s a big country and Ukraine needs European and American support. They’re a little bit afraid of this upcoming vote and also of Trump’s potential election in America and his America First policy.
“The sad thing is, for the political consultants it is a wedge issue: they can pin it on Biden and and it doesn’t really matter to them that they’re being opportunistic. It’s like oh, we can carve off a few of his supporters by doing an America First thing and pulling out of Ukraine, which is a shame.”
Alongside the mural Buehler has included QR codes linking to charities helping Ukraine that include the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children. He adds: “Putting a public artwork out there is also an opportunity for me to hear from people, their reactions as well as their stories, and where I put it is a big part of it. This is the perfect place and then also DC is the perfect place.”
Buehler is working on a follow-up piece that he hopes to bring to Washington. He specialises in big public art installations documenting significant places and events including Ferguson, Missouri; Flint, Michigan; the border wall in Arizona; the Women’s March on Washington; a Trump campaign rally; the centenary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
He made a 50ft “Wall of Lies” before the 2020 presidential election to display the thousands of false and misleading statements that Trump told while in office. “It’s one thing to say it’s 30,000 lies. It’s another thing to see 30,000 lies. You could stand there for weeks if you wanted to read them.” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, came to visit. The wall was vandalised with graffiti attributed to the Proud Boys, including the slogans “Vote Trump or Die” and “Stand Back & Stand By”.
For the midterm elections he made a “Wall of Liars and Deniers”, which reproduced the original Wall of Lies and added a list of hundreds of Republicans who denied Biden’s 2020 election victory. After the results, Buehler gave people red markers to circle names and write “loser”.
On Sunday, Buehler stood by Irpin, Ukraine: Please Don’t Forget Us holding a sunflower and talking to visitors, many of whom seemed moved and grateful.
He adds: “Public art has one impact on the people that see it and then another impact on the people that hear about it when it’s reported on. If I put this in a gallery, if there is a big enough gallery, boy, would the impact be minimised. Even though galleries are open to the public, they’re almost private spaces whereas public art is meant to be seen.
“It’s meant to be pretty simple in its message. It doesn’t need to have an art history background to understand it. Probably all I have to do is say is this is Ukraine and people get it. There’s not a lot of complication to it.”
