An Australian photographer has spoken of her pain and upset at what she has described as the unauthorised use of an image of her daughter as the basis for a pro-Russia mural on a bombed-out building in Mariupol.
Last week an Italian street artist, Ciro Cerullo, known as Jorit, announced he had completed the mural, which features a girl with the colours of the flag of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in her eyes, and behind her a falling bomb with the word “Nato”.
“They lied to us about Vietnam, they lied to us about Afghanistan, they lied to us about Iraq, and now I have proof: they are also lying to us about Donbas,” Jorit, who became popular for a mural of Diego Maradona in Naples, wrote on Instagram. “Be wary of those who would like to give us morals, their hands are covered in blood.”
Amid accusations of plagiarism and of spreading Kremlin disinformation, Jorit said in an interview with Giornale Radio that he had painted “a living little girl from Donbas who spent her first years in Mariupol surrounded by war”.
A number of users on Instagram and Twitter pointed out the resemblance to a photograph taken by Helen Whittle of her daughter, which appeared on a 2018 cover of the Australian photography magazine Capture.
“I have been made aware that this photo of mine, taken in 2018, has been used to create a mural in Mariupol, Ukraine,” Whittle said in a statement released via social media. “I was not contacted by the artist and do not give permission for this image to be used. My thoughts and opinions are in no way aligned with those of the artist involved.”
Jorit later said he had come across the photo by searching on Google for “pigtails” and he had redrawn “the shirt and the pigtails, adapting them to the shapes and lights of the face”.
He said his mural had used “the composition and elements of this Australian girl […] And so what?”
Reached by the Italian website Fanpage, Whittle said “it was distressing and painful for me to see my image copied and used in this way”.
She said: “It seems that he [Jorit] finds inspiration by copying images found on the internet. I am sad and angry that an artist feels the need to copy someone else’s work without asking permission. And I am very saddened by the way my image, my daughter’s portrait, has been used.”
Whittle said she was consulting her lawyers.
Jorit, who made a mural of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky in Naples a few weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has been accused of spreading Moscow’s propaganda about the war in Ukraine, with critics pointing out that bombs that killed hundreds of children in Mariupol were dropped by Russian forces, who were also accused of targeting a maternity hospital in the city.
Valigia Blu, an Italian non-profit independent factchecking and debunking website focusing on journalism, said that before the full-scale Russian invasion there was a mural dedicated to a Ukrainian girl from Mariupol, Milana Abdurashytova who in January 2015 was hit by a missile strike launched by pro-Russian separatist forces and lost her mother and a leg. “Three years later, to commemorate Milana Abdurashytova’s story, street artist Sasha Korban dedicated a mural to her on the facade of a building on Prospekt Myru. But after the occupation, the Russians covered it up,” the website said.
Mariupol was one of the first major cities to be encircled after the Russian invasion. Viewed as a key Kremlin objective, the city was the scene of a siege that the Red Cross called “apocalyptic”. Ukrainian authorities estimate that 22,000 residents of the city died during the fighting.
