KYIV – VENICE: Anka Benera and Arnold Estefan in dialogue with Anatoliy Hankevich

Eternity of the Elements

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/6785835/anca-benera-and-arnold-estef-nblack-seas-scores-for-the-sonic-eye

Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, How to mend a broken sea? video 4K, 19:40

In the Romanian Pavilion’s project “Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye”, the Black Sea is presented not as a geographical or political entity but as a living system of interconnected forces, where the movement of water, ecological processes, and historical memory converge to form a shared field of relations. The project also engages with magical thinking and divinatory practices, in which nature ceases to be an object of observation and instead becomes a medium through which hidden connections may be revealed. Here, the past does not disappear but remains embedded beneath the surface, capable of re-emerging under particular conditions.

A similar role is assigned to the wind in Anatoly Gankevich’s video work Eternal Breeze. No longer merely a natural element, it becomes a temporal medium through which time unfolds as a shifting continuum of possibilities. The movement of air and the shimmering surface of the sea evoke a quiet act of contemplation, where the future is not predetermined but continually emerges through the interplay of chance, memory, and imagination. As in the Romanian Pavilion, nature functions not as a backdrop but as a form of knowledge through which human beings seek to understand their place in the world. Despite their different approaches, both projects turn to the Black Sea as a space where human experience, time, and the elemental forces of nature remain inseparably intertwined.

https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2026/romania

Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, How to Mend a Broken Sea. © Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan.