Angel Lesnikowski
We are terrible to one another: war, mass shootings, genocide, senseless killing. The sheer amount of violence in the world is incomprehensible. What justifies conquering and killing for the sake of power? And why do we crave power in the first place? It’s disturbing to think about how little life is valued by those who make these decisions, who start wars, who kill without remorse. The idea that someone I love, or even a passing acquaintance, could be gone tomorrow because of one choice made in pursuit of power is heartbreaking.
I’ve lived in Fresno my whole life, near a military base. In 2015, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) map outlined potential U.S. nuclear targets, marking the first likely Russian strikes with 2,000 warheads. If nuclear war had been declared, my entire community would have been wiped out or left to survive its catastrophic effects. And yet, America is no better, we preach peace while manufacturing power. The U.S. fuels global conflict, selling weapons to allies at staggering rates. According to the Global Arms Trade, the U.S. accounts for more than 40% of the world’s weapons exports, generating between $100-$200 billion annually.
It’s unsettling. It feeds a doomsday, apocalyptic mindset. If those in power continue to consolidate more for themselves and the cycle of violence never ends, what’s the point?
This mindset comes from my parents and how I was raised. My mom is an Assyrian from Iraq, and she’s dealt with a lot of hardships as a woman in a male-dominated society. Coping with war all her life in her country, there are deep traumas she’s passed down to the family. This generational trauma shapes how I live and think; her experiences of fear, survival, and displacement have been ingrained into our family’s identity. We’re always prepared for war. I’ve had a passport all my life just in case I needed to escape the country, not to take a vacation. We have stockpiles of food and resources just in case we are stuck in a war at home. These behaviors, rooted in her survival instincts, have become part of my reality.
My mom’s fear of death and war stems from her lived experiences, but it also reflects the broader historical and cultural pain of being Assyrian. Ironically, her culture was, at one point, the most powerful empire in the world. Assyrians were ruthless people who killed and slaughtered thousands. And now, centuries later, ruthless people are killing and slaughtering her people. It doesn’t make any sense. Why kill and torture at all? This cycle of violence adds another layer to the generational trauma we carry, the weight of history, survival, and the question of why violence persists.
My dad also contributed to my current outlook. His whole family has gone to war for generations. In 1975, my dad was drafted, and three days before he was supposed to leave, the Vietnam War ended. The best way to describe my dad is a cowboy from LA who is a gun-loving conservative. He was raised on a farm, was a bull rider, wore a cowboy hat and boots with the spurs, and traveled through the central deserts of America.
I learned a lot about death because of my dad. He let me handle baby chicks when I was so tiny I could barely walk. Inevitably, I accidentally killed one or two of them, and he told me stories about how I did it. According to him, this is when I learned that when something stops moving, it’s dead. He was very transparent and vulgar and wouldn’t sugarcoat his words. I remember being a little kid, probably 8 or 9, in the backyard, playing with his guns and shooting cans and cartons of water off a fence. It wasn’t until my brother, age 7, shot and killed a bird that I realized I wasn’t playing with a toy. After that, my brother started killing small animals we found in the yard with my dad’s help. They would catch gophers from underground, put them in a cage, and my dad would teach my brother where to shoot right in the head. I remember watching those commercials on TV about animals in shelters needing our help, and I couldn’t stop sobbing about the little gophers. I would try to catch the gophers before they did. When I successfully did so, I would put them in a fish tank full of dirt and try to raise them almost like a hamster. They never lived more than a few weeks because I was ignorant of adequately raising a gopher.
Family photo of Lealand Lesnikowski, Angel Lesnikowski, Sarah Lesnikowksi, 1999
In college, I learned about the world being more significant than the selfish bubble I lived in. My time as an undergraduate was transformative; through a few feminist courses, I gained knowledge and a passion for women’s rights. Fresno State was incredibly inspiring, as it housed the first feminist art program in the nation. The legacy of feminist artists and professors shaped my understanding of how art could be a powerful tool for activism and change. Their teachings reinforced that the personal is political and that our individual experiences of oppression and autonomy are connected to larger systems of power and inequality.
This realization grew during my direct work with Palestinian women and activists. Their stories and struggles brought the global fight for human rights to Fresno, demonstrating how personal pain intertwined with political movements. These interactions increased my commitment to being a voice for marginalized communities and fighting for bodily autonomy.
As a woman in America, I was old enough to have had experienced the freedom that most had taken for granted since Roe v. Wade established a woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade being overturned caused my rights and freedoms to my body to being taken away state by state. I am currently witnessing every day on social media the death and pain of two current wars in Ukraine and Palestine, with thousands of innocent people dead as the genocide of the Palestinian people grows larger. And the climate crisis is still treated like a joke as our planet heats up and more of our ecosystem dies off. Is it too extreme to say I’m going insane about how my life and everyone’s lives around me are so fleeting?
I have a fear of dying. I mourn for the future me that will inevitably die. How painful is it? How would it feel for my loved ones to get the news? I have so many things I still want to do. I have a life I want to live for a long time. At any moment, through no fault of my own, I could die.
In my art, I express my views through the lens of my human condition with a feminist and feminine perspective. While I address the pain and destruction that follow topics like war and violence, I aim to reflect the presence of the Grim Reaper, embodying fear, sadness, and loneliness and representing women in these contexts. My work is a call for liberation from fear, though I remain deeply aware of its presence.
My work explores these four themes: women's rights, wars, mass killings, and the threats to our ecosystem. Along with things I’ve personally experienced, the looming threat of war and a deep-seated fear of death have profoundly shaped my perspective. Through a feminist lens, I explore these themes, integrating personal experience and larger social realities. My work about women’s rights directly responds to the ongoing battle for bodily autonomy, a fundamental human right in danger in my own country. While these discriminatory policies are targeted at women, they have the potential to harm anyone of any gender and their bodily autonomy. Using personal stories, cultural narratives, and the collective woman's experience, I connected the viewer with the reality of gender inequality. I use sources like Planned Parenthood and firsthand stories from women and girls to illustrate this struggle. My reflections on war, however, are more fragmented. My knowledge stems from family stories and limited research, especially regarding the Assyrian woman’s experience, a narrative rarely published. These fragments of history and personal accounts are woven together, creating a reconstructed narrative that speaks to the complexity of war’s impact on us.
When looking into the complexities of my existence and my personal history, I’m trying to raise awareness of gender inequality, of the damage of war, and of taking away bodily autonomy for women. I aim to bring awareness to this theme by creating work that is symbolically accessible, the harsh truths of what we, as a species, inflict upon each other and our world. Driven by power, revenge, profit, and misguided ideals, we harm one another in immoral ways. Sometimes, we kill for control and personal gain simply because we are misinformed. Meanwhile, we drive countless other species to extinction, creatures vital to our survival, often in the pursuit of wealth or out of ignorance.
This disregard extends to human rights. Here in my own country, gendered rights to bodily autonomy are rapidly being stripped away, emphasizing how we prioritize only our interests because of personal beliefs. Something so crucial should be discussed using science and fact. If we continue along this path of misinformation and exploitation, we get closer to our undoing. We risk creating a future where humanity dwindles and fades, falling victim to extinction by its own hands.