Ukraine

Exhibitedat NATO’s representation to Ukraine (Kyiv), FlowerBed Gallery (Kyiv) and Aarhus City Hall (Aarhus)

The exhibition THAT FLOWER LOOKS LIKE A DRONE was created on the basis of a series of painting workshops that Touborg held in Kyiv together with Ukrainian children who have been liberated from Russian-occupied areas. During the workshops, 20 meter of canvas was rolled out together with acrylics and spray paint which resulted in joyful painting sessions where the children had the chance to simply be children again.

After the workshops the canvas roll was brought back to Denmark where Touborg cut out ten squares from the canvas. These squares got mounted on frames and Touborg finalized the artworks with blurred portraits of the children on top of the background previously painted by the kids during the workshops.

The works are a combination of the children’s playful and vividly painted backgrounds and Touborg's blurred portraits of the children. The result is a striking contrast between the children’s erased identities, shaped by years of Russian indoctrination, and the
childhood that is inevitably pushed into the background as a consequence.
By blurring the children's faces, Touborg visualizes the systematic erasure many abducted children have endured: new names, new languages and new loyalties forcibly imposed upon them. In a time where identity has become a battleground in Ukraine the children’s joyful backgrounds are an insisting claim to their right to simply be kids.
The title of the exhibition is a direct quote from one of the children who, after painting a flower, spontaneously remarked: 'That flower looks like a drone.’

Through several exhibitions the experience of these children where displayed as a collective testimony to the atrocities which abducted Ukrainian children are victim to.