Exhibition “From Tides to Ebbs”
Museum of Contemporary Art of Odesa | UA
October 4 – November 31, 2025

"The sea leaves no one indifferent. For artists, it activates the hemisphere of the brain responsible for creativity - and as a result, artworks inspired by waves and foam are born. For scientists, it stimulates the analytical hemisphere, launching research programs and revealing the complex processes hidden beneath the water’s surface.
The project ‘From Tides to Ebbs’ seeks to unite science and art inspired by the sea, creating a synergy of both hemispheres - worthy of the planet’s most powerful element."
– Yevhen Dykyi, National Antarctic Scientific Center

"For three and a half years, due to Russia’s aggression, Ukraine has been unable to continue its planned scientific research of the Black Sea. Yet we have not stopped admiring its beauty, remembering what it feels like to sense infinity from a ship’s deck, and making plans for the future - together with our sea.
These emotions are masterfully expressed by the artists participating in the exhibition ‘From Tides to Ebbs’."
– EU–UNDP Project “European Union for Improving Environmental Monitoring of the Black Sea”

Odesa is a city born of the sea. Here, the sea has always been more than a coastline - a space of trade, fishing, and leisure under the southern sun, but also one of research, thought, and discovery. Today, in the shadow of war, this connection has been disrupted. That is why now is the most fitting moment to return to the sea - through art.

The exhibition is the result of a two-week residency in which the participating artists worked with the archives of the Ukrainian Center for Marine Ecology, attended lectures by scientists from the National Antarctic Scientific Center, and sought their own ways of communicating with the sea. The exhibition features works by Sofiia Holubeva, Nina Lahuta, Liliia Nebera, Elza Gubanova, Viktoriia Khoroshylova, Alina Radomska, Tania Podubiienko, and Nastia Sopilnyk.

The exhibition unfolds not as a memorial but as a living practice of reflection - where silence becomes a form, absence turns into an object, and the archive speaks through sound, body, and text. It is a space of attentive presence, where science and the sea intertwine with human experience. At the same time, it invites questions: Who preserves the memory of the sea? To whom does science belong? Can art restore the connection between humans and the sea? What can an archive be in times of war - scientific, poetic, or bodily?

The lost connection with the sea - a consequence of war - also becomes a challenge: for intergenerational solidarity, for the restoration of trust, for the creation of a new archive - not only documentary but also sensory, one that stitches fragments of memory into a renewed whole.

Special thanks to:
Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Biological Sciences Halyna Hryhorivna Minicheva (IMB NASU); Candidate of Geographical Sciences Viktor Komorin (UkrCEM); Candidate of Geological Sciences Serhii Kadurin (ONU); Anastasiia Chyharyova (UkrHMI, NANC); Oceanographer Nataliia Dikul (NANC); Candidate of Biological Sciences Sviatozar Davydenko (IZ NASU); Head of the Department of Physical Oceanography and Mathematical Modeling Yurii Dykhanov (UkrCEM); Head of the Department of Analytical Research and Monitoring Organization Yurii Oleinyk (UkrCEM); Yurii Popov (UkrCEM); Vadym Bolshakov (UkrCEM); Oleksandr Filonenko; Andrii Melnyk; Valerii Volkov; Mykhailo Reva; Anastasiia Shamsha; Green Theatre; American House Odesa; Museum of Contemporary Art of Odesa; independent media More Liudei (Sea of People).

Curators: Tetiana Tadai (Cultural Project “SNOBY”), Polina Pyskurova (NGO “KUT”)