Join us for a virtual discussion for the closing of the exhibition Constructing Hope: Ukraine. This program is hosted in collaboration with the exhibition Constructing Hope: Ukraine which is currently on view at the CAC through September 1, 2025.
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Photo courtesy of Repair Together. Photo by Pasha Youz.
This panel, the closing event of the public programming for the Constructing Hope: Ukraine exhibition, will feature speakers Asia Bazdyrieva and Darya Tsymbalyuk, whose research and creative practices engage with the environmental, cultural and political dimensions of war and recovery in Ukraine.
In dialogue with the exhibition, the conversation will explore how both natural and built landscapes are shaped by imperial histories, extractive infrastructures, and ongoing ecological violence. It will also reflect on the role of cultural knowledge, grassroots recovery and interdisciplinary research in shaping resistance and imagining more just and resilient futures.
The event will include presentations by the speakers, followed by a conversation with exhibition curators Betty Roytburd, Ashley Bigham, and Sasha Topolnytska, and conclude with an audience Q&A.
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Asia Bazdyrieva is a scholar and writer with a background in art history and analytical chemistry. Her main interest is in the relationship between natural sciences and their seemingly neutral techniques, and the production of imaginaries that span social strata, while shaping politics and poetics of the earth. In 2018-2022, she co-authored ‘Geocinema’ — a collaborative project exploring the infrastructures for earth observation as co-producing forms of cinema. Bazdyrieva was a Fulbright scholar in 2015-2017 at The City University of New York, and Digital Earth fellow in 2018-2019; she was also a research fellow at the Bauhaus University Weimar. She is currently pursuing her PhD at The University of Applied Arts Vienna, and serves as an advisor in the Advisory Board of the transmediale festival in Berlin.
Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research. Darya is the author of the book Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity, 2025). In addition to writing, she works with images through drawing, painting, collage and film essays. Darya currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago. You can learn more about her work here: https://daryatsymbalyuk.com/
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The Constructing Hope: Ukraine exhibition explores short and long term reconstruction efforts in Ukraine bringing together a wide range of grassroots projects to illustrate how architecture can foster mutual aid and facilitate crucial support networks for entire communities.
