(RE)GROUNDING. Alexandra Clod

Alexandra is an interdisciplinary artist and psychologist. She grew up in the industrial city of Donetsk, Ukraine, which provoked her deep interest in the current environmental crisis and how humans relate to nature.
During the (Re)Grounding residency, she researched the history and mythology of mining, the role of the coal industry in the political and ecological crisis today, and the parallels between miners’ lives in the UK and Ukraine. She visited Blast Beach in County Durham, where sea coal can be foraged, and the archives at Woodhorn Museum and former colliery in Northumberland and Newcastle’s Common Room. Taking all these learnings back to the studio, she created a series of conceptual still-life photographs rich in symbolic and mythological meaning to build a narrative questioning the ethics of the exploitation of the Earth. Alexandra compares miners' work to the ancient Greek idea of ‘katabasis’ - the journey to the underworld, usually going through dangers to the realm of the unknown to find a treasure.
Over the last few months, she has been exploring the political aspect of coal mining in Ukraine’s Donbas region and the historical influence of England in shaping its industry. To reconnect to her childhood playing on the coal spoil heaps, she went to Chervonohrad, in the Lviv region, the westernmost part of Ukraine. Taking her mother as a camera assistant, she reenacted her grandfather's work as a miner. She made a performative gesture of digging in the coal by-products, thus appealing to the ethics of coal extraction and the politics of industrialisation. The final work will be presented at the exhibition.
Music: Wonder Cycle by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International License
Video by Matt Denham
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(Re)Grounding is co-produced by D6 and Kyiv-based IZOLYATSIA, with D6 curator-in-residence Lucy Nychai. It is part of the UK/Ukraine Season of Culture devised jointly by the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute. It was due to take place in Soledar in eastern Ukraine, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine halted these plans. The partners worked together to reshape the project to invite Ukrainian artists to reside at D6’s studios in Newcastle in the North East of England.