Ukraine's got talent?

A few weeks ago, my darling little sister shared the following video with me. I saw it, loved it, and wanted to post it right away. It came to my attention, however, that I should probably do some research on the premise behind the clip. So, here we are, a few weeks later:

The artist is Kysenia Simonova, 2009 winner of the Ukrainian version of 'Britain/America's Got Talent'. The medium is known as sand animation, in which the performing artist creates a series of images by dusting a piece of backlit plexiglass* with sand and then rendering recognizable forms with his or her hands.

The story that Ms. Simonova is telling is really the most interesting part of all of this. Having watched the clip knowing nothing about the sand animation's narrative, there is something intuitively emotionally gripping about its plot progression. However, if you consider that both members of the audience and the judging panel are moved to tears, I gathered that as an outsider to Ukrainian culture, there were some key historical elements to the story that I was missing. And here they are--

What we know as WWII is in Ukraine called the "Great Patriotic War". Theirs was the most devastated nation in the entire global conflict--more so even than Germany. After Stalin decimated Ukranian numbers with famine, they lost 25% of their national population as a result of the fighting-- it is estimated that about 20% of all WWII casualties were Ukrainian. With this context in mind, the animation's narrative really comes to life. As explained in Ms. Simonova's artist's portrait by the Guardian:

"She recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war, bringing calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman's face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament deity as she destroys then recreates her scenes - with deft strokes, sprinkles and sweeps she keeps the narrative going. She moves the judges to tears as she subtitles the final scene 'you are always near'"

There are videos of Ms. Simonova's other sand animation performances on Ukraine's Got Talent, as well as more information on the artist available online. I'm too lazy to put them all up so here's the Google search to get you started.

*Think transparency projectors like we had in elementary school