E17 an ominous warning sign, and above them hangs a lamp similar to the one in Picasso's Guernica. This lamp carries multiple symbolic interpretations—it resembles an eye, a bomb, or even, as some critics have suggested, the Holy Spirit descending from above. Cherkassky employs a deliberately restricted color palette, with striking red garments worn by three family members creating visual focal points. Most haunting are the eyes of the figures—they are open wide with terror, fixed collectively on something beyond the viewer's field of vision. Perhaps they stare at a door or gateway, a threshold of horror they dread—an entrance through which calamity might arrive. Karim Abu Shakra chooses to reference only one figure from Picasso's Guernica: the dead infant. Yet, instead of being held in its mother's arms, the child is cradled by the prickly pear cactus—Abu Shakra's signature motif and visual emblem. Karim Abu Shakra, Untitled, 2023. Oil on paper, 70 x 100 cm
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