Join us for a drinks reception and the launch of Battles of the Mind, an exhibition by The Guardian political cartoonist Ella Baron, hosted by the Art & Conflict Hub. This collection of artwork, created in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières during Ella’s recent visit to Ukraine, offers a personal reflection on the human impact of war.

In May 2025 Ella Baron, a political cartoonist at The Guardian, travelled to Ukraine to record and reflect on the human impact of war. In collaboration with NGO Médecins Sans Frontieres, Ella met patients in a rehabilitation centre for war veterans in Cherkasy and a mental health clinic for internally displaced families in Vinnytsia. The Art & Conflict Hub is pleased to host an exhibition of the artwork Ella produced, exploring the complex marks war leaves on the human body and mind. In Ella’s own words:

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I’ve drawn many political cartoons about the war; drawings that feature Zelenskyy, Putin and the occasional bear. It looked very different from the ground, where war is fought and lived by ordinary people, just like us. In the Ukrainian hospitals I visited, I sketched the precise ways in which war is mapped on individual bodies and listened to the stories behind their unique scars. I drew what people told me, as well as what I saw, because trauma and hope are intangible things of memory and imagination. There’s nothing left to draw of an amputated limb but memories – the same could be said for a lost home or relative. These things are beyond a camera’s reach, which I think gives you licence to reach for a pencil.

Next to each drawing, you’ll find the testimony of the Ukrainian individual that inspired it. These vivid personal stories focus our attention on the human cost of war and the persistence of life in its shadow.

Ella Baron (b. 1995) is a London-based topical artist. Her political cartoons are published weekly by The Guardian and often featured by The Times and The Sunday Times. Ella’s past collaborations with MSF focused on sexual violence in refugee camps and access to maternity care in South Sudan. She is an Arts Council-supported artist with residencies at the Sir John Soane’s Museum and The London Library. Ella studied English at Oxford and has no formal art training. Part of the first generation of artists ‘born digital’, she draws with a tablet and stylus. Ella’s debut graphic novel Interface, a sci-fi social satire about inequality, climate change and tech, will be published by Virago in 2027.

About Art and Conflict Hub

The Art and Conflict Hub is a research and dissemination centre based at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. It provides a focal point for work exploring the relationship between the arts and conflict, including visual arts, dance, music, theatre and film. Using artistic mediums to research, teach and engage with the complexities of conflict, we aim to expand the interdisciplinary agenda of war studies, opening new dialogues and engaging new audiences. The hub aims to bring artists and scholars together to share their work and ideas fostering a space for creative collaboration.

‘Battles of the mind’ forms part of a wider engagement by the Art and Conflict Hub with artistic responses to the war in Ukraine. Working with Ukrainian artists and cultural organisations, this work explores the role that arts are, and can, play in response to Russian aggression and the creation and maintenance of an independent Ukraine.

This project was originally published by The Guardian (July 2025) and facilitated by Médecins Sans Frontières.