This article has been subjected to double blind peer review

This article has been published in: Ocula 32, Flux 2025

author: Grieta Dzergaca (Università per Stranieri di Siena, IT)

Street art and war. Tension between assertion and reflection in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict

language: italian

abstract: This paper investigates how street art related to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict con- structs and guides the public reception of visual messages along a rhetorical conti- nuum between assertion and reflection. The corpus, consisting of over one hundred works collected in May 2024 across Russia, Ukraine, and other countries, serves as an exploratory basis to identify recurrent configurations and “bridge-cases” that hybridise the two poles, through the analysis of emblematic examples using the tools of visual grammar and image rhetoric. The study shows that iconic, compositional and contex- tual choices do not mechanically determine social effects but rather orient different de- grees of emotional and cognitive engagement, thereby contributing to the redefinition of the forms of public discourse in contemporary conflicts.

citation information: Grieta Dzergaca, Street art e guerra. Tensione tra asserzione e riflessione nel conflitto russo-ucraino, "Ocula", vol.26, n.32, pp.46-65, November 2025. DOI: 10.57576/ocula2025-43

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