War is always a stolen childhood. Loss of home, support, parents, favorite toys… The loss of future bright memories. That special enduring sense of love and security, which is founded in childhood, is undermined. Anyone who has ever seen explosions and death will remember it forever. Even a war that is short, kills for a long time. The Stolen Childhood project was born in February-March 2022. I left Russia because I could not accept what was happening there. I couldn’t keep silent, and it became dangerous to speak. I was packing my suitcases, throwing some of my son’s toys in there. At some moment, a doll’s shoe caught my eye. It was definitely not one of my son’s toys. It was just a weird, blue shoe from nowhere. I leaned over it and realized… and began to cry. I cried for a long time. Then I put that shoe in my suitcase, bought a children’s art tool – a burnisher and a few more toys and flew to Sri Lanka. This is where my second home is. I created the installation “Stolen Childhood” out of fishing boat scraps and toy fragments with the help of burning techniques. I cried a lot while I was working on this installation. I spent my childhood in Ukraine. Many Ukrainian children’s childhoods were forever broken by the terrible events of 2022.