Pavlo Makov
(Picture: Valentyn Kuzan)On April 20, the great, the good and the simply stratospherically wealthy of the international art world will descend on Venice for the city’s 59th art biennale. Chances are, however, that Pavlo Makov, the artist chosen to represent Ukraine at this year’s event, will not be there. Nobody knows how the conflict in his country will have developed by the end of the week let alone by mid-April, but as things stand, he tells me down the line from Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, he’s not going anywhere.
“We decided to stay the first day,” Makov, 63, says in rapid English (he apologises for mixing up his words - he’s just done another interview in Italian). “My son came to me at five in the morning and said, they started the war. We collected our things and of course I had to ask my wife, shall we leave [the country]? And she said no.” The whole family has remained, for now - Makov and his wife are staying with around 30 other people including families with children at the Yermilov Arts Centre on the university campus (a building cheerfully described on its own website as “a bunker”), while Makov’s son, his daughter-in-law and her mother are staying at the small lower-ground floor restaurant in the town centre which his son runs, where they were well-stocked for forthcoming events and weddings. “They prepare food for the army,” Makov says.
