04/07/2024
A sketch by the Russian artist Vladimir Fokanov known as “Girl Carrying a Bull,” or, as Fokanov refers to it, “Woman Carrying the Bull.”
An engineer from Minsk, graduated from Moscow State University in 1986.
This is perhaps the most famous of Fokanov’s drawings, much to his chagrin. Fokanov describes himself as conservative and the meaning of his image as “ordinary and patriarchal.” Yet, this drawing of a woman—young, n**e, taking slow, deliberate steps as she carries a massive bull three times her size across her shoulders—has been widely understood as a metaphor for Europe and European futures and as a feminist critique of patriarchal systems (an interpretation which Fokanov openly rejects).
Despite the banality of his artistic intent, Fokanov’s image is visually compelling and, in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, resonates deeply with historical imagery that personifies the Ukrainian nation as female—specifically, as the Berehynia—a revered female figure in Slavic folklore; the keeper of the hearth, the “homemaker” of the nation, the progenitor of Ukraine, both figuratively and literally.
Irina Zherebkina, a Ukrainian scholar of gender studies at Kharkiv National University, which is under siege from Russian bombardment as I do this post, has described the Berehynia as the actualization of a symbolic body for the production of national identity—specifically, a female body that has been violated by outside aggressors.
In 2001, a towering Berehynia statue was installed in Kyiv’s Independence Square at the site where the city’s central-most monument to Lenin once stood.
In recent weeks, the girl carrying the bull has been circulating via messaging apps and social media with the caption “Ukraine saves Europe.”
Girl carrying Bull
Vladimir Fokanov.