Any initiative is welcome if it is to raise awareness and sensitize about the terrible consequences of climate change and global warming. And that is what the two Russian creators, who have mounted an unusual art exhibition under the icy layer of the White Sea, in the remote region of Karelia, in northwestern Russia, are proposing. An exhibition reserved for intrepid and committed spectators, willing to brave the extreme cold for the good of all.
The photographer Viktor Lyagushkin and the plastic artist Denis Lotarev have submerged a dozen paintings, sculptures and photographs in the icy arctic waters with which they denounce how we punish our already battered Blue Planet and put many of the species that are on the brink of extinction. they inhabit it together with a ‘Homo sapiens’ that looks more and more like a ‘Homo necius’.
Lyagushkin, known for his work for ‘National Geographic’, photographed species of the flora and fauna of the White Sea. Creatures that, in turn, Lotarev recreates in his paintings and sculptures. Both artists work with species that are clearly in danger of extinction due to human actions such as the expulsion of millions of tons of greenhouse gases, which causes a rise in temperature, deadly for many creatures. And this especially affects the environment of the White Sea, the southernmost of all the Arctic seas and the most threatened by melting ice.
“The images we expose underwater could be the last of many of these threatened beings,” says the photographer. Some images that in the icy marine environment and under the light that is needed to be visible “appear brighter and three-dimensional.”
With wetsuit
Those who want to enjoy them and join the good cause that has made them possible, must travel to that icy border of Russia, equip themselves with an extra thick wetsuit and arctic diving equipment. Adventure enthusiasts will enjoy a unique experience if they dare to immerse themselves in a hostile aquatic environment with temperatures very close to zero degrees. The works will be submerged in this freezing underwater museum only until April 15, since it is expected that on that date the ice will begin to melt.
Lyagushkin and Lotarev already had experience with these kinds of artistic and environmental challenges. It is the second time they have submerged their works in the sea, after the pioneering underwater exhibition they organized in 2019.
Lyagushkin offered his ‘Life Cycle’ last year in Saint Petersburg, an exhibition in which he presented photos of several of Lotarev’s biomorphic sculptures, who with his project ‘Biofilters’ wants to marry science and art. Lotarev was inspired, as now, by the sea creatures that live under the ice of the White Sea, creatively reinterpreting biological motifs and highlighting their ecological importance.
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