2024-2025
Look at the stars. You see their past because light takes time to reach our eyes. Looking into space is looking into the past. All events there are irreversible. Stars explode, and over time, new stars and planets form from their remnants. The universe is filled with catastrophes that transform into something beautiful in complete silence. After all, there is no sound in space.
The Proxima Centauri system is located about four light-years from Earth. This means that if we were in that system right now, we would see Earth as it was four years ago. We would see Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. Before the massive destruction and environmental disasters, before our lives changed forever.
And now, we long to become the Proxima Centauri system, where time has not yet witnessed the terrible events of February 24, 2022, where time still gazes upon our Earth in quiet serenity.
We look at our Earth and see the Kakhovka Sea still drowning in azure waves full of water. We look at Earth and see Derzhprom standing firm in its skeletal frame of reinforced concrete. We look at Earth and see our lives, still unaware that a great war is coming. And like a frozen scream in space, no one will hear us in this chaos of death.
Astrophysics tells us that somewhere far away, there is a system where time has not yet known the great war. Art allows us to travel there and see the sky of four years ago—quiet and peaceful.
We see the sky of peace, knowing that the sky of war is coming. And the places that were once so dear to us will be occupied, destroyed. And every time we return home, we will remember the sky of four years ago, searching for the Eden we have lost.
We dream of becoming inhabitants of the Proxima Centauri system, looking at ourselves from four light-years away.
And will we ever become…?
The art installation was created during the “Serendipitous Events” initiative, which was a part of the “EU for Gender Equality: Together Against Gender Stereotypes and Gender-Based Violence” programme (Phase 2), funded by the European Union and implemented jointly with UN Women Ukraine and UNFPA Ukraine. The art exhibition is realized in cooperation with NGO InScience under the curatorial oversight of NGO and agency Port of Culture.
Created in collaboration with Olena Kompaniets. Astrophysicist at @mao_kyiv_ua, educational coordinator at @sciencekids.ua from @inscience.io, volunteer at @kryla_peremogy
