This object in the form of a geological time slice crowned by a landscape model questions the possibility of a pristine landscape to exist in the Anthropocene age.
Our knowledge about the world is based on scientific research, which allows us not only to focus on the surface, but to understand what is underground.
Danita Pushkareva’s work is a connecting point between landscape and historical time.
If you draw the entire history of the Earth on a meter ruler, and then mark the history of mankind, then in comparison, mankind only takes up a strip of time smaller than 1 mm.
The visual material of the forests in the upper Soyan river, having inspired the artist, was collected during a scientific expedition in 2019, the purpose of which was to record the manifestations of climate change in this region.
Sociologist Antonina Kulyasova, a member of the expedition, said that her interactions with the very old trees turned her attention to thinking about history.
This is reminiscent of the principle of experiencing time through material objects, founded in the work of Danita Pushkareva.
Danita Pushkareva : We live at the very top of the Quaternary Strata, which was formed over the course of 2.5 million years. However, those fossils (crude oil and coal) that people use today on an ever-increasing scale are older deposits that lie deeper than the deposits of the Quaternary period.
Like geological forces, people are extracting fossils. As a result the territories that are not affected by human activity directly are still affected by global changes.
The distribution of oil, the vicious underside of things, became total. In the intact forest the artist is detecting only a semi-pristine landscape. It was the only option in the Anthropocene age.
Go to Climate and People (Climate Adaptation of Northern Communities).
Dokuchaev Central Soil Museum, Saint-Petersburg online exhibition ( in Russian)
https://we-art-lab.org/exhibition2019More than 20 artists were invited to reflect on the climate change consequences and local community adaptation in North-West Russia.