(RE)GROUNDING. Karolina Uskakovych

Karolina is an artist, designer, and photographer whose practice examines the entanglements of nature, culture, and technology. Her project for Re(Grounding) explores how to find common ground with each other, ourselves, and our environment through the practice of gardening.
​Karolina will be presenting a documentary film project she started in 2021 about her grandmother’s tomato garden and how its meaning changed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Alongside this is an installation featuring wooden gardening flower beds with a map of communal gardens in Newcastle, photos, texts, and explanations of the connections between Karolina and Alexandra's work during their residency, such as allotments for the miners.
The concept of traditional ecological knowledge - learnings and rituals that are passed on over generations - is central to Karolina’s work. While it has largely applied to indigenous groups, she has deployed it more widely to think through ecological knowledge accumulated over generations in other contexts. In Ukraine, for example, traditional environmental knowledge continues to play a part in many people’s lives. While in Newcastle, Karolina discovered this knowledge-sharing in community gardens, including Scotswood and the Comfrey Project.
Karolina is also interested in the spirit of place - Genius Loci - which is often depicted as a snake in Roman mythology. To explore these themes, she has been getting her hands dirty, experimenting with earthly and agricultural materials - soil, compost, grain, and salt dough - that emphasise the fluid connections between humans, technologies, and nature. She also experimented with the extraction of essential oils from tomato foliage in her grandmother's garden and recorded its sounds. These sounds and smells will enhance the immersive experience for viewers during the film screening.
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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.
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Music: CGI Snake by Chris Zabriskie, licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.Music: CGI Snake by Chris Zabriskie, licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.
Video by Matt Denham.