dasNeves: Building 4 canvas sketch.

Ytje Veenstra: Scars of war are felt on many levels. People are being displaced, communities are ripped apart. The trauma of armed conflict not only settles physically, but also spatially; through shelling of houses, hospitals, community centers. This loss of home – a place you feel safe, a neighbourhood where people live, help each other, have ambitions, raise their children – is devastating. The damage is felt long after a war is over. It reflects in the architecture. Bombed out buildings in a ravaged city. Even after rebuilding, what was before keeps haunting us. My building block in this piece is a high rise building. It’s loosely based on one of my favorite apartment blocks in the city I live in. I love architecture that makes use of concrete. High rises have a rhythm, a repetition that, to me, never gets boring. The building I’ve drawn is being (e)razed from the ground up. Its habitants are surrounded by concrete, a dependable material, but once a war is on, nobody’s safe. That’s the contradiction of everything we surround ourselves with.

orabel: