A new land art installation, “Path to the Sky, or the Archaeology of Glass”, has appeared in Lviv’s Znesinnia Park, created by artist Oleksandr Nykytiuk. The installation was produced as part of a land art festival organised by the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of Lviv City Council, headed by Oksana Lutsko.
The work is based on a slanting tree trunk covered with tiny blue and green fragments of glass. This glass had lain in the park’s soil for many years — remnants of products made by the former glassworks that once operated on this site. These fragments have now been turned into a kind of glass “river” running along the surface of the tree, bringing together the history of the area with contemporary art.
While walking along the park paths you can see numerous fragments of glass. These are not modern shards, but remnants of glass preserved from the time when the glassworks operated here. Over the decades they have become an integral part of the natural environment, and now — a material for an artistic installation
The land art object takes the form of a path that merges into a withered tree and rises from the ground upwards, symbolically leading “towards the sky”. To create the composition, the artist used glass fragments collected directly along the paths of Znesinnia Park.
This year, at the end of June, the Land Art Festival returned to Lviv for the first time in eight years. As part of the festival, several sculptures made from natural materials and dedicated to the theme of the impact of war on nature appeared in Znesinnia Park.
The festival was delivered in cooperation with a number of cultural and civil society institutions, including the Institute for Cultural Strategy, NGO “Virmenska 35”, the Department of Culture, the Unbroken rehabilitation centre, the Support Centre for Internally Displaced Persons, RLP “Znesinnia”, the Youth Commission of the Lviv Archeparchy of the UGCC, the Congregation of the Sisters of St Josaphata, UGCC, “Home of Rescued Animals”, “Radio Lvivska Khvylya”, “INSO-Lviv”, “Grinera”, “Nasampered”, Slow Food and other partners.