To the creators, the witnesses and the keepers of the light,

I write to acknowledge the profound burden you carry in a moment when the world feels fractured by war. For those of you in the direct line of conflict, the act of creation is no longer just an aesthetic choice; it is an act of sheer defiance. For those watching from the periphery, the weight of indirect witness brings its own unique shadow - the struggle to find words or forms to represent the suffering. This "aesthetic resistance" against the erasure of culture and memory and your insistence on humanity in the face of destruction is remarkable.

Not long ago, for the Romans, art wasn't meant to express war; it was meant to glorify and justify it. Later, artists have historically processed the themes of conflict. Francisco Goya replaced the 'heroic' soldier with the faceless executioner (The Third of May 1808, 1814). Kathe Kollwitz captured the hollowed-out grief of women and children left in the wake of World War I (The........

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