Earthmate Eco Festival
An exhibition and festival reflecting on ecological crisis and relations between human and non-human life. Artists and curators approached environmental consciousness through doubt, irony and the practical limits of sustainable production.
Curatorial collective: Maria Vtorushina, Andrii Siguntsov and Daria Koltsova.
About the project
Earthmate begins with the difficulty of recognising an ecological catastrophe that is already unfolding. Ukrainian artists and curators ask what environmental awareness can mean in practice, and whether relations with the non-human world can move beyond an exclusively human point of view. The exhibition presents doubts, fears and hopes rather than a set of reassuring slogans.
Its questions extend from interspecies ethics to the temptation to retreat into virtual worlds or private fantasies. Can another relationship with the ecosystem be practised, and what happens when its demands meet the limitations of local production?
These concerns shaped the making of the exhibition itself. Plastic was minimised, materials were reused where possible, glass and ordinary paper replaced some alternatives, and separate waste collection was organised. The process exposed the gap between the ideal of leaving no trace and the practical conditions of producing art. Irony became a way to speak about frightening phenomena while inviting audiences beyond an already environmentally engaged community.