Odesa, 2025 — In the city born of the sea, the exhibition From Tides to Ebbs opens, merging art and science in a shared search for a new language to converse with the Black Sea.
The exhibition is the result of a two-week residency during which the artists worked with the archives of the Ukrainian Scientific Center of the Ecology of the Sea, attended lectures by scientists from the National Antarctic Scientific Center, and explored their own ways of communicating with the sea.
“The sea leaves no one indifferent. For artists, it activates the hemisphere responsible for creativity, while for scientists — analytical thinking. The project From Tides to Ebbs unites both modes of thinking in a shared space worthy of the planet’s most powerful element,”
— Yevhen Dykyi, Director of the National Antarctic Scientific Center.

Participants: Sofiia Holubieva, Nina Lahuta, Liliia Nebera, Yelyza Hubanova, Viktoriia Khoroshylova, Alina Radomska, Tania Podubiienko, Anastasiia Sopilnyk.

Odesa is a city where the sea has been not only geography but also part of everyday life — a place of trade, leisure, scientific breakthroughs, and dreams. In the 20th century, it was here that Soviet oceanography infrastructure was developed: from local studies of the Black Sea to oceanic expeditions. It was from Odesa that the first Ukrainian Antarctic missions departed in the 1990s.
Today, many of these processes have been halted — due to war, lack of support, and shifting priorities. Yet the archives, instruments, scientists, their expeditions, and ongoing research remain.

From Tides to Ebbs is a laboratory exhibition born from the interaction between artists and scientists. It features:
– stories of participants in oceanographic expeditions,
– experiments with archives as artistic material,
– creative interpretations of silence and lost infrastructure,
– reflections on how science becomes part of the city’s evolving identity.
The lost connection with the sea is a consequence of war. But it also poses a challenge — to foster intergenerational solidarity, rebuild trust, and create a new archive: not only documentary but also emotional, where fragments of memory are woven into new wholeness.

The project is supported by:
– National Antarctic Scientific Center
– Ukrainian Scientific Center of the Ecology of the Sea
– EU–UNDP Project “European Union for Improving Environmental Monitoring of the Black Sea”
– Museum of Contemporary Art of Odesa
– Green Theater
– NGO “KUT,” Polina Pyskur
– Cultural Project “Snoby,” Tetiana Tadai
– Private support from caring residents of Odesa