Madness of Men
© EmmaKarolina
Original drawing, ink and graphite on paper, 24 × 30 cm, 2024
A mother and daughter walk along a fractured road toward a towering monument—North Korea’s Arch of Reunification. Their backs are turned to us as they step into a world unraveling. Scattered symbols surround them: relics of faith, politics, war, and extinction. It’s a scene caught between collapse and reckoning.
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The cracked road is littered with metaphors: a tilted tank, an oversized beetle devouring a dead scorpion, and bomb craters pocking the ground.
To the left, a large opium bird partly blocks the way to a car that might offer escape.
To the right, two ostriches flee in panic.
Above, a crane glides across the sky—perhaps a final flicker of hope.
The Full Story
This piece explores the consequences of unchecked ideology and inherited power.
The Kaaba, the Menorah, a crucifix, a Mormon temple—all stand together, stripped of sanctity, questioning the balance between belief and control.
Hanging from a dying tree, a broken dreamcatcher laments the erasure of Indigenous cultures.
Through the arch, Putin’s Crimean Bridge emerges as a symbol of imperial pride, backed by Mount Rushmore—a haunted monument to Western dominance.
Above all of it looms a nuclear mushroom cloud, marking the ultimate outcome of collective delusion.
*Madness of Men* is not an accusation, but an invitation to witness.
To see how structures meant to unify have fractured instead, how symbols lose meaning under the weight of destruction.
The madness may belong to mankind, but recognition may still offer a path forward.