The painting I am presenting is called “The Cries of Evil Times”. In this work, I have tried to express my feeling about the wars that continue to strike humanity across the world.

In the foreground, I have depicted four visible heads, their mouths open, from which cries burst forth—cries of pain, cries for the loss of loved ones, for spiritual suffering, for hunger and survival.

The figures, the heads, are almost deformed, nearly disfigured, as I once saw and experienced them during the war in Kosovo. These distortions are not merely formal, but emotional. They are the marks that trauma leaves on the faces and souls of people.

I have tried to present the scream as the central motif of the work—a call that aims to place the viewer face to face with the inner condition of people who, without their choice, become involved in the tragedy of war.

In the background, I have depicted chaotic movements of people fleeing—hungry, thirsty, exhausted, carrying stones on their backs. I have represented the stone as a symbol of fate and memory, a weight carried along a road with no return. The rope that binds these stones takes the shape of a cross, an allusion to Golgotha and the path of sacrifice, to suffering as a universal human experience.

Above them, I have portrayed a fragment of a wall that travels together with the people, as a metaphor for shared space—for home and for a former life that now remains only a memory.

The first encounter with this painting may not be beautiful in an aesthetic sense, but it is true to my feeling. I have always believed that humanity is capable of peace, and peace is the opposite of everything that is depicted here.

This painting is a small fragment reflecting on the difficult reality of our time.

Faced with this dilemma—war or peace—I paint what I see and what I feel.

Of course, I would prefer peace.

With my painting, I hope that every viewer will carry it in their mind for a long time, as both a message and an image.