ARTMargins Online

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Tagged: environmental art

ARTMargins Online: Interviews / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Maja Fowkes, Aïda Adilbek, Aziza Kadyri, Aigerim Kapar, Anel Rakhimzhanova, Saodat Ismailova ·

Visualizing the Transformation of Nature in Central Asia: Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) Roundtable

This roundtable brought together Aïda Adilbek, Aziza Kadyri, Aigerim Kapar, Anel Rakhimzhanova and SAVA Creative Fellow Saodat Ismailova to discuss the environmental transformation of Central Asia during the Soviet period and its contemporary ramifications through the lens of artistic, curatorial and academic research. Held at UCL on May 29, 2025, the conversation was led by Maja Fowkes, and attended by SAVA Team members Reuben Fowkes, Makar Tereshin, and Sorcha Thomson.

Maja Fowkes: I’m a Croatian-British art historian, I was born in Socialist Yugoslavia and my grandma used to make me a tea I loved, which she called Russian tea. When

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ARTMargins Online: Interviews / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Rita Süveges, Maja and Reuben Fowkes ·

Weather Spectres of the Socialist Anthropocene: An Interview with Rita Süveges by Maja and Reuben Fowkes

Rita Süveges is a Hungarian artist whose research-based practice explores the ecological impacts of industrial systems, ranging from monocultural agriculture to fossil fuels and extractivism. Growing up on the Great Hungarian Plain surrounded by vast crop fields, Süveges witnessed the environmental legacy of socialist agricultural policies. Her interdisciplinary approach combines visual art with in-depth research into technoscientific imaginaries, examining how capitalism responds to environmental crisis through increasingly technological solutions. In her latest project, Weather Spectre, she looked at the history and mythology of weather manipulation.

Maja & Reuben Fowkes: Your solo exhibition Weather Spectre at the Hungarian National Gallery … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Anna Zett ·

Dispose, discard, discare: Environmental, political and emotional wastelands in the German Democratic Republic

In everyday use, waste refers to a material which is considered dirty, useless, or worthless, and therefore deserves to be dumped, ditched or disappeared. If these words are uncomfortable to read, it’s probably because they are frequently used as a metaphor in the social and political sphere. In English, there are numerous synonyms for trash and our separation from it. We might speak politely of disposal, but the underlying problem remains the same: how to get rid of dirty junk for good? Some crap can be directly composted or recycled, but that applies only to very specific materials in very … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Marie Meyerding ·

Christa Jeitner’s Visions of Trees

My first encounter with Christa Jeitner’s work Zakopane Tree (Zakopanischer Baum) was a black and white photograph of an outdoor scene in nature. It shows a hanging textile work in the center. Attached to almost leafless branches, the triangular fabric body hangs in the air while its ends rest on a field floor of stones and grass. Apart from a few tall, vaguely recognizable trees in the background, the upper part of the photograph is almost white, so that the dark branches and the light-colored fabric stand out strongly. Dated to 1979-80, this work was created by Jeitner … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Karolina Kolenda ·

Earth, Matter, Rhythm: Władysław Hasior and the Socialist Anthropocene

Recent years have brought significant developments in the research on the neo-avant-garde beginnings of environmental art in Poland.(Among them is an upcoming book by Magdalena Worłowska on the beginnings of environmentally engaged art in Poland. See: Magdalena Worłowska, Początki sztuki ekologicznie zaangażowanej w Polsce (Warsaw: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, 2025).) The scholarly interest in the rise of ecological awareness in the country at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s—and its reflection in art—comes together with the perceived need to rewrite the history of Polish culture so as to illuminate its multiple … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Maja and Reuben Fowkes ·

The Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts: Online Special Issue Introduction

This special issue spanning ARTMargins Online and ARTMargins Print Journal derives from the ERC/UKRI supported project on the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) that foregrounds the contribution of environmental art history and research-driven contemporary ecocritical art to the interdisciplinary inquiry and epistemic endeavor of the Socialist Anthropocene.(The Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) project is led by Maja Fowkes at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies; see: www.sava.earth.) The Socialist Anthropocene denotes a field of collective inquiry into the sociopolitical, geoeconomic, biocultural, and ecological ramifications of changing relations with nature under socialism. Resisting the tendency to … Read more

A woman in black stands behind a table across from people in white who are wearing leaf crowns

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Jakub Gawkowski ·

Seaberry Juice in Extractivist Ruins: The Cosmopolitical Art of Diana Lelonek

Decades of open-pit mining has left the landscape of the Konin region in western Poland deserted, with the soil dry and hostile to plants. The coal producers, who are legally obliged to recultivate the post-mine landscape face a difficult task, but fortunately for them there are few plants whose needs meet the harsh reality of this barren land. For the seaberry plant (Hippophae), this sandy post-coal environment is just fine to grow, and the plant develops abundantly over the transformed land that was once exploited by the mining corporations. This essay explores the Hippophae of Diana Lelonek’s artistic … Read more