Chernobyl

Jasmine
Sep 4, 2019
2 min read

I chose to create an art piece using acrylic paint and cut out collage pieces to depict Nadezhda Petrovna (a survivor & evacuee) of her resilience, feelings of hope and belonging in her experience in Chernobyl.

Nadezhda expressed:

“From the very first I felt that we were Chernobylite's, that we were already a separate people…”

“One woman invited us to sleep at her house…Her friend started dragging her away from us. “Are you crazy? They’re contaminated!”

“When we settled in Mogilev and our son started school, he came back the very first day in tears. They put him next to a girl who said she didn’t want to sit with him, he was radioactive. Our son was in the fourth grade, and he was the only one from Chernobyl in the class. The other kids were afraid of him, they called him “Shiny.” His childhood had ended so early.”

“Now I sing in the church choir. I read the Bible. I go to church—it’s the only place they talk about eternal life. They comfort a person. You won’t hear those words anywhere else, and you so want to hear them. I often dream that I’m riding through sunny Pripyat with my son… and looking at the roses, there were many roses in Pripyat, large bushes with roses. I was young. My son was little. I loved him. And in the dream, I’ve forgotten all the fears, as if I were just a spectator the whole time”.

I learned that there was a significant amount of fear, uncertainty, stigmatization, and discrimination that survivors had to endure long after the disaster took place. Their experience resulted in a very lonely and isolating life compared to those who were not affected. Using Nadezhda’s story allowed me to see how a person, a woman, a mom, a daughter, a wife has the will and strength to keep living and moving forward. The knowledge that I gained from researching this tragedy will help me if I ever work with an individual or family who are survivors of any kind of disaster. I now have a greater awareness of how a catastrophe can impact a person, not only physically but mentally. My hope is to be able to draw upon a survivor's strength in helping them repair the aspects of themselves that they may have lost.