SEA POEM

Sea Poem is a video work created as a quiet reflection on the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam in southern Ukraine in 2023 — a catastrophe that caused massive flooding, ecological devastation, panic, and displacement. Rather than directly addressing the violence and shock of this event, the work unfolds as a space of calm and balance — a visual poem about the sea, its slow recovery, and its enduring vitality.

Organic, abstract forms appear as living bodies that adapt, search for new configurations, and undergo transformation without disappearing. Resembling metaphorical creatures from underwater depths, they are delicate and fragile, yet resilient. Their slow, fluid movement evokes the rhythm of nature — a force capable of persistence and regeneration even after profound destruction.

The title refers to Poem of the Sea (1958), a film by Ukrainian filmmaker Oleksandr Dovzhenko, in which the reshaping of a landscape becomes a metaphor for renewal. Similarly, Sea Poem reflects on the scale of natural forces and their capacity to heal and restore life, suggesting that even after catastrophe, an irreducible power of regeneration remains.

The work was specially created and presented in 2025 as part of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 24th International Exhibition Inequalities during the Triennale Milano. It was included in the group project Ukraine: Inhale/Exhale!, promoted by ZAG Gallery and curated by Khrystyna Berehovska.

The pavilion explored inequality through the lived experience of war — emergence and disappearance, the artefacts of victims, and the notion of a dream. Although Western Ukraine is relatively safer, inequality is felt more sharply there: physical, psychological, and spiritual. The project addressed the divisions between those who fought and those who witnessed the war from afar, between those who became victims and those who must learn to understand them — not through sympathy, but through respect.

Within this collective context, Sea Poem functions as a meditative counterpoint, focusing on nature as a witness to destruction and as a space of continuity. It proposes regeneration not as a return to the previous state, but as an ongoing process of transformation — quiet, fragile, and persistent.