"Земля Палає / The Earth is Burning"

Recently, I have participated in this newly created written piece  "Земля Палає / The Earth is Burning", a collective publication on ecocide in Ukraine caused by the russian war, to which I have contributed with the following written piece:

"Rooted Flows; Decolonising Watery Cartographies in Times of War" by Seila Fernández Arconada, a poetic experimental mapping that acts as an embodied and relational journey to rethink ecosocial justice. It departs from the Dnipro River, and other rivers in Ukraine, to reach our own “bodies of water” while cultivating forms of decolonising Nature.

As experimental weaving, the words of this piece aim to bring the reader closer to sensing the Dnipro River, its more-than-human interdependency and our mutual (co)existance in times of war. From an ecological, embodied, decolonial engagement to an ecofeminist, trauma informed approach, this ongoing artistic research became a written piece for this collective opportunity, searching to be in dialogue with the other pieces while getting tangled in poetic political forms of water.
 
This work arises from the ongoing project "Dnipro River: Ecosocial Belonging in Wartime", a collective space led by Seila, exploring experimental forms of solidarity with the Dnipro River, who is a direct witness and victim of this war. It began in early 2025 and will keep continuing in 2026 as a collective platform for further transdisciplinary artistic research. Seila began working in Ukraine in 2016 and since 2022 has been over two years merging artistic practice with humanitarian actions".

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Земля Палає / The Earth is Burning is a collective publication on ecocide in Ukraine caused by the russian war. This publication has been edited and curated by Liza Goncharenko who brought together artists, researchers, and writers to explore the destruction of ecosystems, memory, culture, and everyday life under wartime conditions.

Through essays, visual projects, field observations, and artistic research, the contributors Karolina Uskakovych, Yuliia Kishchuk, Marynka Dovhanych, Paris Bezanis, Seila Fernández Arconada and Liliya Chavaga reveal how invasion transforms rivers, forests, agricultural land, wetlands, cemeteries, and sites of collective memory.

This publication was made possible through the generous support of the Track Report of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.

The publication will be presented at events across Europe, where copies will be available in exchange for a donation to our chosen Ukrainian grassroots initiatives, helping to support their ongoing work while sharing these urgent ecological, cultural, and artistic perspectives with an international audience.

Images and text by Liza Goncharenko.