Transformation of a military facility into an Art object Fly

History of one RPG
RPG-18 “Fly” – the first Soviet hand-held rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade. It is designed to fight tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery mounts and other armored targets of the enemy, and can also be used to destroy enemy manpower located in light shelters and urban-type structures. Adopted by the Soviet army in 1972.

It was this RPG that was created in 1975, when I was 5 years old. When I painted this RPG, certain thoughts arose in my head.
How many weapons were created during this time, it had to fire sooner or later. During the collapse of the Union, we gave away nuclear weapons, then the weapons were sold, destroyed. And we were left defenseless.
You can spend your freedom less than the one who is not able to protect you.
Voltaire

The war began in 2014, it was this used RPG that was taken from the Donetsk Airport. This artifact came to me from the cyborg defender of the airport, which was delivered to him after being wounded by the fighters. I turn a used military RPG into a peaceful art object. This weapon has spanned my life from creation to use to transformation.

I draw flowers, it’s like a memory of the people who died on our land: children, civilians, military.
Flowers are also the beginning of a new life, peaceful life, birth, renewal and prosperity of our Ukraine.

I on renovation land
There will be no enemy, adversary,
And be son, and be mother,
I will be people on earth
Shevchenko T.G.

Thank you for the song Kolaba & Oleg Lakhman, words echoed in me with every cell.
I used this song “Leto without war” when creating the video.

III National Prize “Best Ukrainian in the Profession” 2021

State Residence of the President of Ukraine, on May 21, Hrushevskoho, 22, Kyiv

I became the III Prize laureate of the National Contest “Best Ukrainian in the Profession” in the “Fine Arts” nomination; the ceremony took place in the Small Mariinsky Palace, the famous Polyakov mansion on May 21, 2021.

Plenty of smart, beautiful and talented women of different professions from different parts of Ukraine became laureates and winners of this prestigious contest. My dear friends, I am so happy that our Ukraine is rich in talents and I am double happy to be involved in this event!!!
I would like to thank the organizers of the event Tetyana Kolyada and Marina Kinakh.

Also, I am happy that my painting “My Gustav Klimt” was sold at a charity auction and the money was used to buy 3 vouchers for the orphans to have a rest at the seaside this year. I long to thank Iva Edgarova for organizing this goodwill deed!
At first, I didn’t want to talk about this fact of my life, but then I realized that I should share the news to involve more people in the development of our society. Keep in mind: everything starts with your goodwill and desire to be a doer but not a speaker! And if with love you do what you like so much, then sooner or later you will achieve success. And if it is in your power to help someone, then you need to follow your destiny.

My motto is Love, Harmony and Peace to our land!
And also I do believe that if you smile to the world, the world will smile to you in return!
I really want people to get this love, joy, warmth and emotions through my paintings.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi

The most important exhibit at the Louvre Abu Dhabi is the building itself.

French architect Jean Nouvel:

“The idea was to create an Arab agora, a place where people could gather, come here and come back again, talk about culture, art, so that it is not just a building with an entrance, called a museum.”

The Louvre Abu Dhabi building has many water channels and a huge openwork dome (180 meters – the diameter of the museum dome). This gives the impression that the museum is in the open air on the high seas.

The dome of the building is made up of 8,000 metal stars that overlap and scatter sunlight.

“I wanted this umbrella to establish a metaphysical relationship with the sky, ”says the architect.

Egypt

Memory Сells. Egypt, 2020, acrylic, oil on canvas, 80x80cm

Memory Cells. Egypt / Memory cells. Egypt.
Egypt is not the Promised Land: it is a land created by man day after day, year after year, a work that is renewed endlessly, where the creations are mixed with the image of the Creator. There are no sharp differences between gods and people: there gods dwell among mortals; their faces are the same human faces or the images of animals that surround them on earth and in heaven. In every piece of the Egyptian land – water and universal, cosmic fire, death and resurrection, human essence and divine essence.
That is why, when I saw one family of Egyptians, it seemed to me that the gods came to life, I wanted to draw them.
The ancient Egyptians were an extremely life-oriented people who largely tried to supplant the thought of age and death. Instead, the concept of life in the afterlife and rebirth was put to the fore.

The thinking of the ancient Egyptian people was not rational – logical, but figuratively – symbolic. There was a magic principle that all perfect, great things are reflected in something small, outwardly nondescript – both above and below, the macrocosm is equal to the microcosm. On this basis, the scarab beetle became a symbol of the rising sun, and the sky could be depicted as a cow. In the same way, it was possible, through symbolic actions and drawings, to influence important processes taking place in the world of the Gods and in the other world. The symbols themselves were attributed to their inherent inner strength, something like an essence or soul.

The ancient Egyptian religion contained a huge number of deities with diverse forms of manifestation. Gods – as, indeed, people – were supposed to have a large number of different qualities of character, so that one and the same deity could be depicted in all kinds of incarnations.

Ankh is one of the most important ancient Egyptian symbols with the meaning of “life” (“immortality”), also known as “crux ansata”. The sign is very simple but powerful. It combines two symbols – a cross, as a symbol of life, and a circle, as a symbol of eternity. Their combination means immortality.

The Eye of Horus is the emblem of the falcon-headed god of the sky Horus, a symbol of the all-seeing eye and the unity of the cosmos, the integrity of the universe. According to ancient Egyptian myth, the moon eye of Horus was snatched out by Set in the battle for supremacy among the gods, but after the victory of Horus in this battle, it grew again. This myth became the reason for the extreme popularity of the Eye of Horus as a warding off evil amulet. The spiral under the eye (shaped like a galaxy) symbolizes energy and perpetual motion.
The Eye of Horus was also associated with healing, as ancient Egyptian physicians often viewed illness as analogous to the battle between Horus and Set.
In mathematics, the Eye had a curious function – it was used to denote fractions. According to one version of the myth, Seth cut the torn out eye of Horus into 64 parts, so his incomplete image symbolizes some fractional number: the pupil is 1/4, the eyebrow is 1/8, etc.

These are my memories, my acquaintance with Egypt, to be continued …

In my studio, painting process

My sunny boy, 2020, oil on canvas, 100×80
The work was written in the online plenary “Art unites the world! Ukraine 2020” specially for the INSHE ART charity project.
Our future is our children, and therefore my grandson Tyomochka became my main model, and it so happened that when we were walking, and Tyoma was riding a gyro board, we saw sunflowers, and the picture formed by itself like a puzzle.

FRONTRUNNER Magazine

This is incredible! I believe in miracles !!!
It is incredibly simple at the same time Kyiv saw my paintings in the Museum of the History of Kyiv and there was an interview in the FRONTRUNNER magazine !!! Off and Running … into the future ART. MUSIC. FILM. CULTURE. New York / London, founded in 2009. !!!!!

And they wrote about me in FRONTRUNNER, who sees the whole World!
Just an incredible story !!!
I thank Edward Symes and Mary Pat Abruzzo for this honor to represent Ukrainian art !!!!!

https://frontrunnermagazine.net/oksana-okhapkina/

#FRONTRUNNER #OksanaOkhapkina #ОксанаОхапкіна

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is an art museum in Lisbon that houses a collection of European fine art, as well as a number of monuments of oriental and ancient art, collected by entrepreneur Calouste Gulbenkian. It was opened on October 2, 1969 according to the will of the billionaire and is subsidized by the foundation named after him.

The museum consists of several buildings located in a beautiful park. I have visited only 2 buildings, they are located in different parts of the park. One of the buildings houses the Founder’s Collection, while the other houses the Modern Collection. I first got to the building with the main collection. There are collected about 6 thousand exhibits.

First you need to tell who Galusta Gyulbenkian was.

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian; March 29, 1869, Istanbul – July 20, 1955, Lisbon – British financier, industrialist and philanthropist, a major oil magnate of the first half of the XX century. Co-founder of many oil companies. Founder of the Iraq Petroleum Company, pioneering oil production in the Middle East. In Russia, he is primarily known as one of the buyers of paintings from the Hermitage collection. Also known as “Oil Talleyrand” and “Mister 5 percent”.

Unlike other famous collectors who began collecting art objects already at a more or less mature age, this passion struck Calouste as a child. For 50 piastres received from his father for his academic success, a 14-year-old boy bought ancient coins at the Istanbul bazaar, which later became the basis of his richest collection of Greek coins, considered the best in the world. Gyulbenkian had a unique and peculiar aesthetic taste, and the ability to see beauty, which eventually grew into a real passion. To this, of course, was added an excellent knowledge of art, which allowed Gulbenkian to become the most famous collector of the world scale.

“A painting should be enjoyable, entertaining and eye-catching. Yes, pleasant. And without that, there are enough boring things in life. We must not increase their number, ”he once said.

Gulbenkian’s sphere of interest in art was wide. Along with art canvases, the collector with the same enthusiasm acquired rare editions, ceramics and much more, and when choosing, he was guided by the motto “I can only be satisfied with the best.”

“The way Gulbenkian used his fortune throughout his life, and the way he disposed of it in his will, demonstrates his understanding of the social function of wealth and the corresponding obligations,” write in Portugal 20 years after the death of Calouste Gulbenkian.