solomiya № 4 – The Environmental Issue

soлomiya is a self-published magazine founded in April 2022 in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Artists from Kyiv and Berlin collaborated to make this magazine, which aims to promote the visibility of common democratic and European values shared by people from Ukraine and other European countries. Being a platform of self-expression for the young generation of creatives from Ukraine, soлomiya is both an itinerant group exhibition and an art object in itself.

The first monothematic issue of Solomiya—The Environmental Issue—brings together a collection of artists and researchers reflecting and advocating on behalf of Ukraine’s more-than-human communities and ecologies. In collaboration with the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network (UEHN)—an international collective of curators, artists, and scholars—we’ve created an issue that celebrates the richness and complexity of Ukrainian landscapes. This issue offers a diverse range of perspectives, amplifying voices that challenge the colonial, imperial, and extractive narratives that have long shaped external perceptions of Ukraine’s environment.
Through written essays and visual works, the contributors take us on a journey across the country: from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in Polissya to the submerged ruins of the Kakhovka Dam in Kherson, from the vibrant wetlands of Odesa to the fertile yet threatened agricultural lands of Luhansk and Kropyvnytskyi. Shrinking rivers, displaced scientific collections, traditional ecological knowledge, nuclear legacies, and the scars of industrial agriculture are just a few of the urgent themes explored in this issue.