An Encounter with Light and Darkness

Melle van Maanen
07.03.2026

Two simple wooden chairs loom in a darkened room. They cast sharp shadows against the wall. A faded backrest, worn down by a seated body. The seat ripples, small cracks creep downward. As I get closer, I see that the chairs also have metal parts. Two screws protrude from a brightly lit metal front leg.

When I encounter them, strolling through the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, the chairs have already undergone a remarkable transformation. Parisian artist Alexandre Henry received them in a battered state in 2025 from a man in a village near the Ukrainian city of Izium, not far from the front line. The chairs, along with the man's house, had been destroyed by a Russian missile. In what was left of the house, Henry found the remains of the missile. He had the remains melted down at a smeltery just outside Kyiv and used the aluminium to repair the damaged chairs. The missile became a prosthesis.

Henry, Alexandre. The Light into the Darkness. 2025. Wood and aluminium from melted-down Russian missiles. Courtesy of the artist.

The work, which is part of Henry's series of sculptures entitled The Light Into the Darkness,1 reminds me of the so-called trench art from the First World War. Once the cannon fire had died down, the remaining copper shell casings were transformed by (mostly) anonymous artists into elegant vases decorated with floral motifs and birds. What once brought death was transformed into something that carries new life.

In Ukraine, where Russia started a war of destruction in 2022, Henry sees this happening again. People crawl out from under the rubble time and time again, and continue with their lives – against all odds. They rebuild their destroyed homes with abandoned Russian equipment, fully aware that tomorrow the front line could be in their back garden once again. With the chairs, Henry has melted injury into the rough skin of scar tissue.

Every day we read news about Ukraine and are thus indirect witnesses to this war. Yet the reports remain abstractions, allowing the impact of the war to remain at a distance. With their traces of wear, violence and healing, the chairs create a closeness that we rarely experience, unless we – like Henry – immerse ourselves in it.

Among the objects of impeccable taste at Dutch Design Week, the chairs are an unusual sight. They look just like people. Marked by their users and the war, seeing the chairs is like meeting someone who confides their life story to you. The experience of looking at them feels so intimate that I feel compelled to avert my gaze. When I tell Henry about this encounter on the phone, he aptly describes his sculptures as “portraits of people, with all their scars”. The chairs are living witnesses. Animated beings.

Henry, who studied photography in Paris and Berlin, also took photographic portraits of the people he met in Ukraine. And in fact, the chairs work in a similar way to photography: they capture a moment and provide evidence that something has taken place. The destructive impact of the rocket is not destroyed, but is rather made tangible. Just as a photograph records an event with light-sensitive chemicals, the impact of the war and the resilience of the Ukrainians is stored as a memory in these chairs.

In this way, the chairs also touch on the importance of proof. In an interview with Dezeen, Henry talks about the importance of documentation for the collective memory of the Second World War.2 It was one of his motivations for travelling to Ukraine as a photographer with Dutch Civilian Action, a non-profit organisation that provides humanitarian aid on the front line. Despite the possibility of manipulation, photographs are still considered authoritative proof in court cases. When printed in the newspaper, a photograph can shape the perception of a war. And perhaps most importantly, they convey the stories of those involved, regardless of any nationalistic ambitions or image-building. The value of this can hardly be overestimated, especially in a war of destruction such as the one in Ukraine.

“In war, truth is the first casualty,” as the Greek poet Aeschylus famously said. In that context, Henry's sculptures offer some hope, albeit with a bit of a bitter taste. Hope that in a world where the authority of proof is being challenged with increasing impudence,3 art will continue to bear witness in a most powerful way. For no matter how many missiles are fired, humans will continue to create and build a new beginning. An unquenchable flame in the darkness.


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Melle van Maanen is curator at Museum Het Schip and writes about architecture for the Dutch newspaper NRC. He has previously written for The Dutch Review of Books, Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt and Simulacrum. He likes to explore the intersections where architecture, design and art converge with world history.
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This article was first published in printed issue of Platform Pudding #1, centered on the theme of proof and published in March 2026.

Noten

1. See website of the artist: https://alexandrehenry.net/.
2. Alyn Griffiths, ‘Alexandre Henry transforms explosion-damaged objects into “silent witnesses” of Ukraine War”, Dezeen, 4 december 2025, .
3. Ruben Stift and Simone Peek, ‘Kremlin: niet nodig om bewijs te leveren voor ‘Oekraïense aanval’ op residentie Poetin’, NRC, 30 december 2025.