“Undereocened,” 2024

stone, resin

Presented in the exhibition is Undereocened — a 40-kilogram sandstone object with melted amber. The work takes the form of a fictional artefact from an imaginary museum of the future. Its title refers to the Eocene epoch, when sandy and sandy-silty sediments formed part of natural systems in which resin accumulated and gradually transformed into amber.

The object bears witness to the physical and chemical transformations of amber caused by an anthropogenic catastrophe of such magnitude that the material returns to its original state — resin. Amber moves backwards through geological time, towards the Eocene, to a moment before mineralisation had taken place.

Catastrophes restart geological processes, undo established phases, and return matter to a pre-Anthropocene state, inviting humanity to transition into a new condition — fluid and formless — and to become conscious participants in the slow processes of geological change.

Iryna Loskot is a Ukrainian artist from Kharkiv. Her practice explores the relationships between humans and more-than-human beings. She examines non-human experiences during catastrophes alongside human encounters with histories that extend beyond the human perspective. By bringing together the planetary scale of ecological and political transformations with personal experience, she investigates how historical and geological timescales shape one another.

Photographer: Anton Sorochak