Climate Art Labs
Кліматично-мистецькі лабораторії

art residency, exhibitions, art-science-activism collaboration, performance, video, installation, collage
with thanks to: ITTA, Ekoltava, Metaculture, Rezydentsiya Molodi
funding: Culture Bridges (British Council), Heinrich Böll Foundatio, 350.org 
2018-2020

About


Climate Art Labs was an interdisciplinary residency that brought together art, climate activism, and science in Ukraine. Emerging from a place of both concern and care — a recognition of the urgent need for climate action and a belief in the transformative potential of collective imagination — the project invited participants to delve into the complexities of relations in the more-than-human world.

At its heart was a question: How can artistic and cross-disciplinary practices help comprehend the unfolding climate crisis — not only as an ecological emergency but as a deeply historic and political phenomenon?

The project began with an 8-day residency in the Carpathians, where 16 artists, scientists, and activists came together to explore climate change through multiple registers — material, social, and symbolic. Through dialogue, and experimentation, participants formed interdisciplinary tandems, developing joint projects that unfolded over the following two months. During their fieldwork participants travelled from the Kherson’s Oleshky Sands semi-desert to Lviv and Donets’k heavily logged forests, to the Polissia wetlands in Chernihiv region. The process culminated in exhibitions in Chernivtsi (Rezydentiya Molodi) and Kyiv (MetaCulture and Kyiv National Botanical Garden), creating spaces where art became both a method of inquiry and a form for re-politicizing environmental questions.

Climate Art Labs was an invitation — to think deeper, imagine otherwise, and reconsider how we we act in times of crisis.

Works



Climate Outskirt


video, installation
Maksym Khodak and Svitlana Krakovska

“Aestheticization of factories, industrialization, heavy manual labour, and five-year plans - these were the features of social life during the forced industrialization of the USSR. Everyone went to the utopian future. And nobody thought about the environmental damage they inflicted on such actions. In those days, no one was worried because of the environmental threat and global climate change. People began to take on ecology much later. In general, the period of forced industrialization left us a huge legacy. Not only in the form of production infrastructure, but also in the form of huge CO2 emissions. Therefore, in my work, I try to understand the damage done from the point of view of my contemporary, to understand how we live with this heritage.” — Maksym Khodak    


Desertification


video, installation
Semen Polomanyi, Kostiantyn Vasiukov and Iryna Sokolova

"Desertification" is looking at the global processes of anomalous climate change, as well as desertification processes in Ukraine.

“Climate change processes are becoming increasingly noticeable in Ukraine. Droughts and desertification are increasingly occurring in the South. According to Ukrainian scientists, the speed of such processes is increasing, while they are rapidly moving north. Seeing a desert in the forest-steppe zone may soon become a sad reality. With footage from the Oleshky Sands in the Kherson region, we want on the one hand to set the viewer up for contemplation and calm, "idle" viewing, and on the other hand, to warn about the threat of the spread of these barren and uninhabited wastelands, which threaten the existence of people on these lands. The viewer has the right to choose: to accept or not to accept this information, to start taking active action or to remain inactive. 

Behind the scene, you can hear shell explosions and automatic gunfire: since the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of Russian aggression in Donbas, part of the Oleshky Sands National Park has been occupied by a military training ground. Its appearance here is controversial, it disrupts the peace and the established ecosystem. This prompts thoughts about the new borderland (which Kherson region became after the annexation of Crimea) and, at the same time, the capture of nature by war without its consent, as well as without the consent of environmentalists. Wars are a catalyst for climate change, and their deployment within established ecosystems accelerates destructive processes. The sounds of explosions and gunfire in the frame but out of sight involuntarily prompt thoughts about possible climate wars that may arise due to the struggle for territories with more favourable living conditions.” — Semen Polomanyi


zong

HD-video, 16:9, stereophonic audio, installation with found object
Teta Tsybulnyk, Elias Parvulesco, Svitlana Pototska

“Zamglai nature reserve is one of the largest bog systems in Ukraine. Its name probably derives from the Old Kurdish word ‘zong’ meaning bog. We look at the bog phenomenon from different perspectives: as a locus of fears in the folklore of agricultural societies; as an exploited landscape in the industrial age; as a complex system of ties between species within the posthumanist paradigm; as a natural carbon sink reducing the greenhouse effect and countering climate change.

The installation that was a part of the exhibition version of the project included found objects from Zamglai bogs, herbarium from Zamglai plants, photos, postcards with the route to Zamglai, an article about the work, academic paper by Svitlana Pototska about importance of Zamglai bogs for the biodiversity and climate changes.” — Teta Tsybulnyk and Elias Parvulesko


On Behalf of Science


postcards, collage, text, audio
Karyna Lazaruk and Svitlana Krakovska

“The postcard depicts Svitlana Krakovska, a climatologist and member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCCC), wearing three outfits: the gear for an expedition to icy Antarctica, in a dress for speaking at the IPCCC conferences, and in her favourite Antarctic Society T-shirt. She looks ahead and holds a globe in her hands. In the background are steam, ice, water, and space to illustrate the conditions of our (human) existence.

The postcard contains an important message that we are threatened by the danger of climate change, which we ourselves have caused with our way of consuming and using energy. The text calls for realizing that we are not just witnesses, but the cause of climate change, we must recognize this and take personal responsibility for our actions, change our consumption habits and lifestyle.” — Karyna Lazaruk


Counting


performance, video, installation
Tetiana Kornieieva and Lidiia Kryshtop

“Deforestation is a human invasion into the natural landscape. The project explores the limits of human aggression towards nature and the Other as a stranger, an enemy, which forces us to protect territories. But can we talk about the ownership of the landscape when any territory rightfully belongs to nature? The military actions taking place in East of Ukraine are not only an invasion of the Other as a stranger, but also the eradication of the role of nature, belittling it and folding into use for their own purposes, changing the landscape and aggressively fitting into it. The project explores the possibility of interaction with the changed landscape through performative practice, as well as in urban space. 

During the performance, the artist tries to inscribe her own body into the forest zones of the Svydovetskyi ridge modified as a result of logging, as well as into the altered due to logging, mining and military operations forests of the Donetsk region.” — Tetiana Kornieieva


Team & Participants

Artists: Teta Tsybulnyk and Elias Parvulesko (ruїns collective), Maksym Khodak, Yullia Serdiukova, Nadiia Chushak, Tetiana Kornieieva, Karyna Lazaruk, Semen Polomanyi, Kostiantyn Vasiukov

Researchers: Svitlana Krakovska, Svitlana Pototska, Anastasia Rashchenko

Activists: Lidiia Kryshtop, Iryna Sokolova, Olga Fursik

Core team: Maryna Tsyhryk (Ekoltava), Vasyl Fomenko (ITTA), Oksana Tykhovska (ITTA)

Facilitators and co-curators: Olena Anhelova, Olha Boyko, Sasha Dolgyi, Anna Khvyl, Yuliya Maklyuk, Viktoriya Myronyuk, Olha Serhiiyenko

Concept and coordination: Iryna Zamuruieva


Info


Organisational partners: ITTA and Ekoltava

Funding:

In the media:
Image credit: Nika Popova
© Iryna Zamuruieva 2025