Red Rebels from Oxfordshire gathered on Sunday 20 March in a field near Checkendon to channel their horror at the war in Ukraine through moving with John Buckley’s harrowing sculpture The Nuba Survival. This haunting artwork depicting two skeletons in an embrace commemorates the resilience of the Nuba people living on the edge of survival in the mountains of South Sudan, witnessed by the artist while working with them in 2000.
Oxfordshire’s Red Rebels conceived this collaboration as the sculpture evokes a powerful echo from the future of the nightmare generations will have to suffer as a result of conflict, competition for resources and natural disasters that will occur as a result of the climate catastrophe that we are blindly following our leaders towards.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th made our visit more poignant, as the rural setting of the sculpture evoked the devastation to the Ukrainian harvest which will bring further stress to wheat supplies and the food crisis in many countries. The tender embrace of the figures moved many of us to tears as we thought of the senseless agony of the people of Ukraine, and their bravery in the face of such suffering.
We want these images to communicate our solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and with all those suffering through other conflicts throughout our world, in Yemen, in Syria and elsewhere.
We want these images to evoke a vision of the future that we all face unless we take action now to avert disaster. Time is very short.
We support Extinction Rebellion’s action in London which starts on April 9th and demands that our leaders Tell the Truth about the climate emergency and Act Now to avert the worst outcomes. We call on all people to Be the Change you want to see in the world and immediately End the Fossil Fuel Economy which is creating hell on earth.
Photos by Feng Ho