VISUAL ART CREATIVITY OF SCHOOL STUDENTS AS A FORM OF CONSTRUCTING MILITARY ASPECTS OF CIVIC IDENTITY

Abstract

This article examines the artistic creativity of Ukrainian school students as a form of constructing the military dimensions of civic identity in the context of full-scale war. Armed aggression is considered not only as an external conflict but also as a profound internal upheaval that transforms the worldview, moral orientations, and civic consciousness of early adolescents, teenagers, and youth. In this context, drawing serves not only therapeutic or expressive functions but becomes a means of symbolically processing traumatic experience and shaping representations of heroism, loss, solidarity, and national dignity. The aim of the study is to analyze school students’ visual art as a form of constructing military components of civic identity, particularly through the symbolic modeling of war experience and the internalization of collective memory. The novelty of the work lies in the interdisciplinary approach to the interpretation of student visual art – at the intersection of psychology, art history and cultural anthropology – taking into account the military context. The novelty is also noted in the focus on visual manifestations of military motifs in student art – in particular through archetypal figures (protector, angel, mother), sacred codes, cultural markers, transcendent motifs and emotionally rich symbolism. The analysis of such images allows us to trace how a sense of belonging to a nation is formed in the process of creativity, which resists, remembers and transforms trauma into a valuable resource. The conclusions state that student drawings are not only evidence of lived experience, but also a visual space in which existential maturation is recorded, elements of military civic identity are formed and national solidarity and responsibility are internalized. The visual works of schoolchildren appear as a space for existential maturation, moral reflection and the creation of a common cultural memory. It is emphasized that artistic creativity plays an important role in the formation of moral guidelines, strengthening narratives of resistance, and also serves as a tool for integrating experience into the broader context of national memory.