Timely return to myth

The oldest surviving images show that artists have often turned to the figure of Cassandra, and some of the earliest artistic depictions of the Trojan princess, priestess, and prophetess can be found on ancient frescoes, bas-reliefs, amphorae, and others. The second chapter of the 2023 edition Cassandra. Literary and Visual Images,⁴ published in Italy, explores the evolution and significance of the images of Cassandra in Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, including ancient iconography on frescoes, scenes of rape on ceramics, images of the prophetess in sanctuaries and tombs, among others. Notably, the image of Priam’s most beautiful daughter is examined through the concepts of beauty, sensuality, and femininity in the visual arts of antiquity, as well as the relationship between nudity and beauty.⁵ The figure of Cassandra has been analyzed in Pompeian painting, which illustrates the assimilation of the heroine into Roman culture, emphasizing the dramatic nature of the fall of Troy, scenes of conflict and prophecies.⁶ Just like in literary arts, Cassandra is not the central figure in the visual plots of the Trojan cycle of myths, yet she is endowed with expressive symbolism, through which particular meanings, ideas, and signals are conveyed.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, where a new fresco depicting Cassandra and Apollo was discovered in 2024, notes that the scenes depicted on the frescoes performed have not only decorative, aesthetic and entertainment functions, but also a social function, as their stories prompted conversation during banquets and discussions of important topics in high society. Gabriel Zuchtriegel states that

These days, Helen and Paris represent us all: each day we can choose whether to focus solely on our own private lives or whether to explore the way our lives are entangled with the broad sweep of history, thinking for example, not just of war and politics, or of the environment, but also of the atmosphere we are creating in our society, communicating with others in real time and on social networks.⁷

The Trojan War and its heroes emerged in the focus of museum workers in 2019-2020, when the British Museum organized a large exhibition, “Troy: Myth and Reality,” which brought together almost all landmark works from around the globe that have been inspired by the Trojan myths –from classical antiquity up until contemporary Hollywood epics.⁸ The curators of the exhibition set up a separate section dedicated to the images of women and goddesses, aiming to highlight those in the background of the heroic age and give a voice to those who did not have one in times of the Trojan war.

This is important in the context of the current Russo-Ukrainian war, where the image of the prophetess Cassandra has become increasingly prominent, particularly in Ukrainian art. Cassandra allows us to rethink Ukrainian history, as she represents the transformation of a marginal figure in the Trojan War – a victim of the destruction of an ancient city, who was not believed by others – into a central heroine whose main message is warning and a call to action, as well as a pronounced pro-feminist and anti-colonial stance. Over the past decade the image has been seen as one that conveys a warning against wars and an active position of female heroines.

Stefaniia Shabatura and Lesya Ukrainka – resistance to the regime and the search for identity

The Ukrainian playwright Lesya Ukrainka read that from in the Augustan era every poet considered it their duty to “glorify the fall of Troy in their own way.”⁹ Thus, in 1907, Lesya Ukrainka wrote the dramatic poem Cassandra (LU). The poetic drama is the first work of literature to bring Cassandra’s image to the forefront. She becomes the protagonist, the Trojan princess, who tries to prevent the fall of Troy, to warn against danger hidden in the treacherous gift of the Achaeans – the Trojan horse. While writing about Troy, Lesya Ukrainka was simultaneously describing Ukraine, which did not have its own statehood at the beginning of the 20^th century. When analyzing the reasons for the fall of ancient Troy, Lesya Ukrainka warned Ukrainians against alien and enemy ideologies and called for the revival of the Ukrainian nation, this provided an impetus for interpreting Cassandra’s image in Ukrainian art. The artist Shabatura also created the Cassandra tapestry at a time when Ukraine was under Soviet occupation and there was a high threat of repressions against Ukrainian culture and the loss of identity.

In 1971, Shabatura prepared two tapestries, Lesya Ukrainka and Cassandra, for the anniversary exhibition commemorating the 100^th anniversary of Lesya Ukrainka’s birth. The event brought together numerous works of art inspired by the writer’s texts, her portraits and sculptures, as well as illustrations for publications. Nonetheless, Shabatura’s tapestries were declined for political subtext. The images and symbols depicted on Cassandra were not so much a vivid reference to the Greek mythological plot but rather reflected the anxious warning for Ukrainians via recognizable Cossack symbolism, heroes, colors, and mottos. This rendered the tapestry threatening to the Soviet system.

The Soviet authorities recognized that the tapestry did not comply with the requirements of socialist realism at the time, as it used a combination of Ukrainian national colors (blue and yellow). They were afraid that the slogan “Wake up, Troy! Death is coming for you!!!” could contribute to a national awakening which they were sometimes required to suppress with repressive measures. Furthermore, the artist participated in the dissident movement, that is, an intellectual, cultural, and political resistance movement against the Soviet regime.

The Soviet ideological system was built on censorship, political conformism, and state control over creative products. Artists were required to serve the doctrine of socialist realism. Shabatura and other dissident artists resisted Soviet restrictions which suppressed creative liberty and independent thinking, denied national identity, and persecuted everyone who thought differently. Prohibition to participate in exhibitions was a common practice in the USSR, aimed at preventing young artists from contacting the audience, which at the time was introduced by “ideological censors.”¹⁰

Solomiia Diakiv notes that the investigator was particularly bothered by the “seditious” letter “Ш” in the artist’s surname in the tapestry signature, as it “looked to them like a… trident.”¹¹ Yaroslav Kravchenko concludes: “Given the specificity of decorative art – woven tapestry and, at the same time, the monumentality of the created image – the work was perceived somewhat differently from the naturalistic carpets of socialist realism and, of course, was shocking to the ‘critics in civilian clothes.’”¹²

Three art historians were commissioned to examine the tapestry. The criminal case file contains a list of questions about Cassandra, which the appointed experts were tasked with examining. State security authorities compiled the list of questions, initiated the seizure of the tapestry, and subsequently filed a case against the artist.¹³ The questions pertaining to the correspondence of the tapestry’s content to Lesya Ukrainka’s work, its idea and direction, included the following: “How can the composition of the image, symbols and colors in the tapestry be explained?” and “Does the tapestry contain topical themes and what impression does it make on the viewer?”.¹⁴ One of the experts, art historian Volodymyr Ovsiichuk, “risking his personal freedom,” tried to save the artist. He is the author of the expert report, which was signed by two other appointed experts. Krupnyk explains that by being forced to write a generally negative conclusion, Ovsiichuk nevertheless smoothed over the rough edges and used general phrases, while veiling the essence of the tapestry with phrases about the Soviet revolutions.¹⁵ Due to the fact that “the experts gave a moderate assessment,” notes L. Krupnyk, “the work Cassandra, like others seized after the arrest, was saved from destruction.”¹⁶

Art critic Roman Yatsiv calls the tapestry Cassandra the author’s ideological and simultaneously aesthetic manifesto quite straightforward in its social and semantic parallels. The researcher notes that “Lesya Ukrainka, with her phenomenal creative instinct and acute sense of beauty and pain, became a guide for the artist to delve deeper into the aesthetic aspects of art, which led her to great success, primarily in the field of textile arts.”¹⁷ In this context, Orest Holubets mentions that “sensing the imperfection of the ideological system, some young Lviv artists consciously directed their creative energy into the field of decorative and applied arts, where bold formal experiments were taking place, which were prohibited in sculpture, painting and graphic arts,” and their original compositions to a large degree offered compensation for these limitations.¹⁸ Since applied arts were not under as much totalitarian pressure as monumental arts, artists had more space to experiment with content and form, revive national elements of Ukrainian art, and partly resort to modernist experiments prohibited in the USSR.

Shabatura, as Roman Yatsiv notes, used graphics and tapestry “to appeal to the deep ethno-national roots of Ukrainian identity,”¹⁹ to revive modernist traditions in visual, decorative, and applied arts using ethnic material. Shabatura’s tapestries were acts of intellectual resistance against the totalitarian regime; they used images, symbols, and subtext to convey secret messages. That is why they were so effective in the fight against the government, which responded harshly to innovation and severely punished Shabatura.²⁰ Yatsiv concludes that, due to its interesting details and exaggerated depictions of characters from the dramatic poem Cassandra, the tapestry made a strong impression on the artist’s circle of friends, later becoming “one of the symbols of the nationwide resistance movement against the regime.”²¹

A renowned Ukrainian tapestry researcher, Zenoviia Shulha, speaks of artistic fabric as a “powerful weapon” that “stands on guard of Ukrainian identity, undistorted historical memory, and the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state.”²² Referring to the works of Krypiakevych, Shabatura, Yaroslava Muzyka, Vasyl Krychevskyi, and other artists, she demonstrates the continuity of the tradition of resistance aimed at preserving Ukrainian statehood. In particular, in 2016, an exhibition entitled “Textiles as Weapons”²³ was held in Lviv, revealing the same idea through numerous artworks and discussions.²⁴ Research of textiles as weapons is also showcasing its global dimension, in particular in publications by Julia Bryan-Wilson²⁵ and the conference Interwoven: Threads, Patterns & Disruptions, which will take place in November 2026. In the Ukrainian context of the 1960-1980s, tapestry became the perfect form of resistance to the Soviet system by manifesting ideas and shapes prohibited elsewhere, while simultaneously reclaiming the authentic initial form of Ukrainian art.

Cassandra as the image of an artist

The image of Cassandra in S. Shabatura’s tapestry also reflects the role of artists as a medium through which the history of the state and its people is conveyed, transforming myths, legends, folk tales, and historical events into signs and symbols for transmission to future generations. The Soviet totalitarian system fought artists and intellectuals as particularly dangerous enemies who posed a threat to the political system. These are times when the role of the artist in society was changing, as creators defend cultural identity and national statehood, protest openly, express despair at perceived danger, and assume the responsibility to defend and speak the truth. Shabatura noted that the Sixtiers, in fact, “were a movement that awakened national dignity and consciousness, overcoming total fear in society.”³⁷ How can we not mention the protest against repression during the premiere of the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in September 1965, the acts of self-immolation in Kyiv in the late 1960s, the protest during the funeral of Alla Horska in December 1970, among many other events.³⁸ Tamara Hundorova remarks that Lesya Ukrainka’s Cassandra also speaks of the fate of the author-artist, who “calls the world out of nothingness, is a priest and instrument of the unconscious, and at the same time a real person who suffers and is subject to death.”³⁹ The image of an artist is the focus of another tapestry by Shabatura, created as a pendant (diptych) to Cassandra, namely the image of the author of the dramatic poem depicted in the tapestry Lesya Ukrainka (Either death or victory – these two paths lie before us).

The image of an artist is the focus of another tapestry by Shabatura, created as a pendant (diptych) to Cassandra – that is, the image of the author of the dramatic poem, Ukrainian poet, playwright, and cultural figure Lesya Ukrainka, depicted in the tapestry Lesya Ukrainka (“Either death or victory – these two paths lie before us”). She brought the “spirit of relentless individualism” (Dmytro Dontsov) to our literature, showing how a strong personality opposes society and accepts their fate and mission with dignity. Shabatura places the artist at the center of the composition, as seen in other tapestries by the weaver. Alla Horska and a group of artists did the same with the poet-prophet Taras Shevchenko in the stained-glass composition Shevchenko. Mother (1964) for Kyiv University. In the spring of 1964, the authorities destroyed this stained-glass window because they deemed it to be “ideologically flawed” and, at the end of 1970, Horska was killed.⁴⁰

Zenoviia Shulha argues that Lesya Ukrainka is reminiscent of the iconographic tradition of depicting saints with their hagiography, “Lesya Ukrainka stands in the centre, full-length, with a book in her hands, and on either side are figures of folk avengers breaking their chains.”⁴¹ Tapestries Cassandra and Lesya Ukrainka have been written into the Christian tradition despite the mythological plots of Trojan history and Lesya Ukrainka’s drama.

Under Lesya Ukrainka’s feet and above her head are thorns, because the author wrote “A crown of thorns / will always be better than a royal crown, / the path to Calvary will always be more majestic than a triumphal procession. / So it has been since time immemorial / and so it will be forever, / as long as people live / and thorns grow” (LU, vol. 5, p. 221). Other lines from Ukrainka’s poetry resonate with Shabatura’s life path: “The path to Calvary is majestic when a person remembers why and where they are going” (LU, vol. 5, p. 221). Moreover, her path as an artist in a totalitarian system was thorny and majestic, like that of many political prisoners and victims of terror. R. Yatsiv notes that she was surrounded by a group of equally talented and conscious young people who were “searching for their true spiritual and moral roots: Iryna and Ihor Kalynets, Vasyl Stus, Bohdan and Mykhailo Horyns, Viacheslav Chornovil, and others.⁴² In those years, Shabatura was fully aware of the risks, yet she chose this active path in order to preserve Ukrainians as a nation.”If we are ever remembered, it will be as martyrs, / As those who dared to remain true to themselves in times of turmoil,” said Stus, with whom Shabatura was united by protest and struggle during those turbulent years.⁴³ In her statement at the end of 1979, already as a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which was still exiled and under surveillance in the Kurgan region, the artist noted that she

was born in an era and in a country where the human personality in the face of its people, in the face of humanity, is manifested as programmed by party ideology and party-state bodies. There is no room for individual thinking, no room for an objective understanding of the history of one’s people, it is impossible to propose one’s own plan for further development of one’s nation or even to provoke an open discussion about the unsatisfactory state of human rights in the country, violations of the law, assimilation, etc.”⁴⁴

Shabatura’s words echo the thoughts of Cassandra, who would prefer not to see the future that awaits her Troy and the Trojans, who would like to be wrong, so that her words “were malicious” and not true. In the same statement, she writes the following:

having gone through numerous transfers, detention centres, camps, isolation wards, and cell-type rooms, I know what it means to be exiled. It is not difficult for me to predict what awaits me when “I’m free” – and it becomes difficult to breathe. I look with sadness at the current state of affairs in Ukraine. How wonderful it would be if I were wrong or acting with malicious intent. If only it were as Soviet propaganda says.⁴⁵

Shabatura recounted a three-part, prophetic dream, which was fateful for her. In one episode, she met the author of Cassandra: “… my favourite poet Lesya Ukrainka comes out, holding carnations in her hands, which she hands to me, and I take them…”⁴⁶ After the verdict wasannounced in a closed court session, one of the artist’s friends managed to pass her some carnations, but the guard snatched them from her hands, leaving only one broken flower.⁴⁷ [In conversations with the investigator in exile, Shabatura recalled that she behaved as if she knew what awaited her in the future, “as if she had been enlightened”: “There is nothing criminal about my case, I was simply interested in poetry, art, and I also created works of art and had my own opinions – do you really think that this is a crime?” “It won’t last forever,” she told the investigator, “less than ten years after we are released from prison, a new era will begin. Then the poems of Stus and Kalynets will be published.”⁴⁸ And Shabatura was not mistaken. In December 1979, her term of exile ended, and in just ten years, as she had predicted, the Soviet empire collapsed. The artist had always known this. Fortunately, the Cassandra tapestry survived, even though, for many years, various sources claimed it had been destroyed following the court’s verdict.⁴⁹

Today, Shabatura’s Cassandra is among the lesser-studied works of artistic textile – of imagines agentes according to A. Assmann⁵⁰ – which interprets the mythological image of the Trojan priestess as a symbol of remembering the past, of resistance, and of warning in connection with Ukrainian history. Thus, Cassandra by the Ukrainian artist Shabatura, inspired by the dramatic poem Cassandra by Lesya Ukrainka, maintains the interpretative tradition of the image of the Trojan prophetess and the demise of Troy, referencing the Ukrainian national context of the enslaved country, which was true both in Ukrainka’s and Shabatura’s lifetimes. The artist’s tapestry is an ideological and aesthetic manifesto that became a symbol of Ukrainian intellectual resistance to the totalitarian regime. Cassandra combines modernist traditions of the European avant-garde with the profound ethnonational foundations, an ancient plot, and the image of the main heroine-prophetess with historical and symbolic images from Ukrainian history, the structure of an ancient tragedy with icon painting. The image of Shabatura demonstrates resistance to the totalitarian system, which erases identity, the plots depicted in the tapestry preserve the images of memory and both tapestries – Cassandra and Lesya Ukrainka – function as “textile weapon” against the Soviet ideology.