Three Spoons

My painting, Three Spoons, explores the forced migration and devastating effects of the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster.

The painting reads “I scrubbed the house. I bleached the stove. You need to leave some salt, a little plate and three spoons. As many spoons as there are souls in the house. All so we could come back.” as said by one of the displaced survivors.

I found that quote in the book The Voices of Chernobyl and was very moved by it. I researched the custom to leave plates, spoons, and salt in order to return and could find nothing more about it.

On May 25, 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant in the northern Soviet Union, about 65 miles north of Kiev, caught fire.

During a late-night safety test, which was designed to simulate a black-out, power failure all the safety systems were intentionally turned off. A combination of reactor design flaws and a reactor operator arranging the core in a faulty way, lead to a steam explosion and then an open air fire.

The fire burned for 9 days before they were able to put it out, all the while it spewed tiny radioactive particles into the air which fell on the Soviet Union and much of Europe.

The Soviet government covered up the disaster. In denial, the nearby town of Pripyat was not evacuated until 36 hours after the incident, long after people began falling ill.

Over the next 10 days the evacuation area widened and extended up to 30 kilometers. Over 135,000 people were ultimately evacuated. The area remains closed even today.

Approximately 400 times more radioactive material was released by the Chernobyl accident than by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

Following the accident 300,000 to 350,000 people worked as liquidators between 1986 and 1989. These people included power plant operators and emergency workers and many others.

They constructed the sarcophagus that surrounded the reactor, cleaned up debris,  and buried contaminated buildings, forests, and equipment. Sadly the information about the danger involved for the liquidators was suppressed.

Officially 31 people were killed in the blast and another 150 died from related causes however at least another 5,872 casualties were reported by the cleanup workers.

It is impossible to determine the number of people affected by various cancers although it is estimated that there have been approximately 4,000 deaths from cancer for people that lived in the area.

This accident caused so much pain and suffering. It is really hard to comprehend the amount of destruction that it caused.