Chernobyl's Chronicles

On 26th April 1986, a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, blazing the sky with devastating amounts of radiation. Thirty-eight years later, Chernobyl remains a ghost town. Beginning in the spring of 2024, Genie Poretzky-Lee created a series of layered collages on paper to ritualise the role the elements play in reframing trauma. Finely balancing the fragility of human life with the consequences of advancement, her drawings explore the violent rupture of the disaster and the slow, almost indifferent return of nature as it reclaims toxic, radiated spaces. Where there could have been total eradication, there is now transformation and potential.