Gabriëlla Cleuren

War: a catastrophe once deemed impossible that suddenly strikes, takes us by surprise, seems implausible, a relic from a distant past, yet takes shape and begins to unfold like a crocodile’s tongue and teeth snapping shut simultaneously. Are we in the year 2022, the 21st century???
Nothing will change in humanity. Evil exists and time and again it grows through the flowers like a terrible weed that destroys everything: poisoning,  erasing and annihilating humanity. It is twofold. It is part of the fragile human being. It corrupts one’s own fabric and then that of a great many others. The good turn against the good in a state of bewilderment. The generation gap is played out, parents against children,  full of disbelief. Have they never learnt to think critically? Alas!

Evil exists, scientists have found; it is real, just as eyes and ears exist. The evil one rejoices in the suffering of others, takes delight in pain, sorrow and inhumanity; is sadistic and knows no empathy, only pleasure in pain and in inflicting suffering and destruction. That is why it keeps reappearing. Is it a disorder or inherent to human nature? Probably the latter, judging by humanity’s thirst for destruction, the greedy, the powerful, the insatiable who lack humanity, just as it gives rise to unstoppable destructive forces in the cosmos.

Humanity is special, is divine, is good, is heart-warming and fragile, is like a defenceless child.

We must be vigilant.

The horrors reaching us now are insane. Children and mothers are being bombarded with artillery, a devastating violence. How can you do such a thing to people in the 21st century, to innocent, defenceless, vulnerable people? The arsenal of destruction is no longer in any proportion to our restraints and the capabilities of our reason.

 (We have few inhibitions; we were social beings from the very beginning, had no dangerous organs, so we didn’t need them either.)

But we have devised monstrous weapons and cannot control them.

It will destroy humanity, as Goya once claimed.

Deeply moved by such events, I have captured many of them in images as a warning. The escalation is also evident over the years. Will this end badly for humanity?