A number of Putin faces, with their eyes cut out, are scattered around the image. The word Chaos, wrong, hungry bastard, pepper the page. On the top right, a woman faces the cutout of an astronaut floating in space. On the other side of the image is the word ‘fire’ with black scribbles emerging from it. Next to it is a toilet seat, with Putin emerging from it holding an American flag. A hand-drawn face looks over the image-scape from the top left.

Christian John Gerstheimer

Part of the “Dear Mr. Putin…” series this collage reflects on the crimes of violence that are being committed in Ukraine by soldiers of the Russian Federation under the authority of Vladimir Putin. The soldier depicted in profile on the upper left hand side spits out a wire (from the pipe cleaners sent to me) that travels through the eyes of Mr. Putin repeatedly throughout the artwork to comment on the way that the soldiers of Russia may someday turn on their leader (Putin) to destroy his authority.

While creating this collage I recognized that not only Putin has committed war crimes and that other nations seeking to enlarge or restore their boundaries have also committed similar crimes without reckoning.