VATMH Distinguished Visitor
2025 | Darya Tsymbalyuk
Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research. She is the author of the book Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity, 2025), in which she offers an intimate portrait of her beloved homeland against the backdrop of Russia’s war and ecocide. In addition to writing, Tsymbalyuk works with images through drawing, painting, collage, and film essays. Her visual work was featured at the 5th Odes(s)a Biennale of Contemporary Art, Kyiv Biennial 2023, The Württembergische Kunstverein Stuttgart, and Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture, among other places.
Tsymbalyuk currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago.
You can learn more about her work here.
Awards
2023 | Mary Zirin Prize, Association for Women in Slavic Studies
Selected Publications
(book) Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity, 2025)
(book) Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics, and Donbas, written and edited with Victoria Donovan (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Ukraine, 2022)
Constellations of Ukrainian Thought and the Environmental Humanities, with Tanya Richardson, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, forthcoming 2025
The Unlikely Species Entangled in Ukraine's Resistance to Russia, BBC Future Planet, February 2024
I Dream of Seeing the Steppe Again: Plant Stories in the Context of Russia’s War on Ukraine, Narrative Culture Journal, summer 2023
Radiant Absences, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, issue 61: Earthly Mattering, summer 2023
Ukraine and the Traps of Proximity to European and Russian Slavic Whiteness, Funambulist: Politics of Space and Bodies, June 2023
Academia Must Recentre Embodied and Uncomfortable Knowledge, Nature Human Behaviour, 2022
A Landmine Detonates in the Woods, IWM post, 2022
Kyiv to LA
Darya Tsymbalyuk's residency is part of a unique collaboration with Kyiv to LA, a cross-cultural initiative that invites Ukrainian artists, researchers, and art historians to participate in a residency and public program in Los Angeles. Organized by Independent Curator Asha Bukojemsky, the project marks a unique collaboration with several Los Angeles organization, including the Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House; 18th Street Arts Center; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (ICA LA); GRI Scholars Program; California Institute of Technology (Caltech); The Center for European and Russian Studies, UCLA; Los Angeles Filmforum; and e-flux in New York, amongst others.
Kyiv to LA is made possible by a generous grant from Nora Mcneely Hurley and Manitou Fund.
Previous Visitors
Dana Kavelina (b.1995 in Melitopol) is a filmmaker, animator, and artist based in Kyiv/ Lviv, Ukraine (currently living in Germany as a refugee). Working primarily with animation and video, her practice includes installations, painting, and graphics that thematize military violence and war from a gender perspective. Positioning the victim as a political subject, her works investigate the distance between historical and individual trauma, memory, and misrepresentation.
https://www.e-flux.com/video/339843/letter-to-a-turtledove/
Project Description:
During her residency at Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House, Dana Kavelina will research and develop a new experimental film about the Holocaust in Western Ukraine. Focussing on the Lviv pogroms of 1918 and 1941, and the Yaniv concentration camp, Kavelina will use her time in Los Angeles to collect archival footage from museums and archives in the USA, Israel, Germany, and Poland. She will develop a script and storyboard for the stop-animation film, and shoot flat cut out animations on site at the Thomas Mann House and Villa Aurora. The film is planned to be produced in Lviv, Ukraine during the summer of 2023.
Kyiv to LA:
Dana Kavelina's residency is part of a unique collaboration with Kyiv to LA, a cross-cultural initiative inviting six Ukrainian artists and art historians to Los Angeles from January - June 2023. Organized by Marathon Screenings / Independent Curator Asha Bukojemsky, the program invites participants for a two- month residency, culminating in a public program with a variety of LA-based organizations. organizations including Villa Aurora Thomas Mann House, 18th Street Arts Center, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (ICA LA), Getty Research Institute Scholars Program, and Art at the Rendon. Additional programming will be hosted by e-flux in New York.
Kyiv to LA is made possible by a generous grant from Nora Mcneely Hurley and Manitou Fund.
Exhibitions:
2018 – One Can Not Be Too Careful, Lock in Gallery, Brighton, Great Britain
2019 – The Cave of Golden Rose, Closer, Kyiv, Ukraine
2019 – War in Museum, Kmytiv Museum of Soviet Art, Kmytiv, Ukraine
2020 – Introspection, Voloshyn Art Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2020 – The Room of Lyolya Yefremova, exhibition in private apartment, Kyiv, Ukraine
2021 – Dedication. Traces and Tactics, Kristianstad Kunsthalle, Kristianstad, Sweden
2022 – Points of Resistance IV Zionskirche, Berlin, Germany
2022 – Chain Reaction, MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, Italy
2022 – Visions of Ukraine, Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany
2022 – Loss Report, DAADgalerie, Germany
2022 – Imagine Ukraine, M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium
2022 – War at a Distance, Neue Galerie Graz, Austria
2022 – Women at War, Fridman Gallery, New York, USA
2023 – Об’єднані. PinchukArtCentre Prize 2022, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv, Ukraine
2023 – Signals, MoMA, New York, USA
Screenings:
2018 – Krok animation festival, Kyiv, Ukraine. Grand-Prix for the best animation film
2019 – Odessa International Film Festival, Odessa, Ukraine. Special Jury Mention in National competition
2021 – E-flux “War and Cinema” film program
2022 – MoMA Museum of Modern Art online program “Notes from the ground”
2022 – “Peace is War” program at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
2022 – “Letters from Ukraine” program in HKW, Berlin, Germany
2022 – “Letter from the Front” program, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin
2022 – Participated in the conference “Decolonizing Russia’s War on Ukraine”, London, UK
2022 – Participated in the conference “Collective Body Dismembered: Histories, Identities and War in Ukraine”, Kopenhagen, Denmark
2022 – FID Marseille festival
Awards:
2018 Special Jury Prize at OIFF, Mark Tulip, who spoke with flowers
2018 Grand Prix of KROK festival, Mark Tulip, who spoke with flowers
Kyiv to LA - Partners:
18th Street Arts Center: https://18thstreet.org/
ICA LA: https://www.theicala.org/en
GRI: https://www.getty.edu/research/
Art at the Rendon: https://artattherendon.com/
e-flux: https://www.e-flux.com/