You Will Always Be With Us

After the airing of the television program, Ukraine’s Got Talent, Kseniya Sobchak is no longer the only famous Kseniya out there in popular culture. The winner of the contest was sand animation artist, Kseniya Simonova, who drew:

a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a unique one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about Ј75,000 (approx $125,000).

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. The final quote is “You will always be with us.”

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.

Kseniya Simonova says:

“I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me.. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment.”Source: Anastasia Carroll.com

Here’s more from the Guardian:

About 13 million people watched Kseniya Simonova win Ukraine’s Got Talent live with an extraordinary demonstration of “sand art”. Most of them, according to reports, were weeping. The judges and studio audience sobbed throughout. Ukraine, where a fraught presidential election campaign is under way ahead of a vote in January 2010, is enduring a deepening financial crisis and the raw, sentimental depiction of Ukraine’s suffering, even drawn in sand, was too much.

Ever since May, when Simonova first stepped on stage with a light-box full of sand and drew pictures in it, deftly creating tableaux of the country’s history, her performances have collected new viewers. Her winning appearance has now notched up more than four million hits on YouTube. The number of hits is extraordinary for a foreign web clip, especially given that few people watching it could understand its message.

Simonova has returned to ordinary life in the Crimean seaside town of Evpatoria, where she has used her $125,000 prize to buy a modest house and set up a children’s charity. Simonova has told interviewers she is happy to stay in Evpatoria and will not be travelling abroad to cash in on her growing global fan base.

Her success has taken the young woman by surprise. “I only entered because there was a child I know who needed an operation and I wanted to help,” she said. “I did not mean to make the whole country cry.”Source: Guardian

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Here’s the video of Simonova’s winning performance:

(Link to YouTube video for Facebook readers)

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• You: Sand artist Kseniya Simonova winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent becomes internet hit (telegraph.co.uk)
• Ukraine’s Got Talent winner brings nation to tears (guardian.co.uk)
• Ukrainian sand animator a YouTube sensation (thestar.com)

Україна має талант (Ukraine’s Got Talent) premiered on April 3, 2009 on STB (Channel). The show is hosted by Oksana Marchenko. The three judges are Vladislav Yama (famous dancer), Slava Frolova(showmaker), and Igor Kondratyuk (showman). The prize of 1,000,000 Ukrainian hryvnia (April 2009, approximately US$125,000) was won by 24 year old sand animation artist Kseniya Simonova

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