The catastrophic explosion of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 26 April 1986 tore through Ukrainian land, leaving behind a radioactive wasteland and affecting thousands of lives far beyond the borders. That day marked the worst human-made ecological catastrophe in history. Chernobyl is a haunting reminder of human error and political negligence caused by the oppressive Soviet system, where hierarchical structures thrived on fear as fuel.
Decades after the disaster, the 30 km Exclusion Zone remains a site of danger, a haunting mix of eerie silence and persistent growth of mutated biological forms. Radiation levels are still dangerously high, yet, since 2010, the area has been open to visitors, lured by the post-apocalyptic landscape. The only thing that is safe to take from the contaminated zone as an artifact is a memory, whether fleeting or recorded.
Diana Thater’s Chernobyl Redux, 2023, a revisitation of her 2011 artwork Chernobyl, is precisely this: a collection of captured memories transformed into an immersive video installation. The overlapping projections filling the space have no sound, which is truly symbolic – this reflects the stillness and desolation of a place once vibrant with life, now turned into a ghost town.
The exhibition space of Luma Westbau takes the viewer to a scaled-down hexagonal reconstruction of Prypiat’s abandoned movie theater. In the middle of the silent room, watching my shadow overlapping with the shadows of the artist, her crew and their equipment placed among the rubble, I thought about our mediated perception of nature and history. As the artist has mentioned in interviews, showing the filmmaking equipment within the work is intentional. In this way, the installation blurs the boundaries between witnessing and constructing, experiencing and reflecting.
Diana Thater, Chernobyl Redux, 2023, video still from the installation
Courtesy the artist
Like Chernobyl itself, her piece functions as a moment frozen in its own decay yet constantly evolving in meaning. The images of crumbling walls changed into the footage of local wildlife reclaiming the area. The vivid colors tinted the space, leading me into a world where life and destruction coexist. In Thater’s hands, Chernobyl stood as not merely a site of disaster but a living paradox - an abandoned Soviet city overtaken by nature. Przewalski’s horses, once extinct in the wild, now seem to thrive in this poisoned human-free environment as a symbol of hope. Life against all odds.
Installation view Diana Thater, Chernobyl Redux, 2023, Luma Westbau, Zurich, 2024
Image: Annik Wetter
Today this work resonates with urgency. For me, as a Ukrainian, it is impossible to separate the echoes of Chernobyl from the realities of modern atrocities. Images of the destroyed walls of Mariupol Drama Theater flooded my thoughts. So did the stories of the heroic employees at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, who, under Russian occupation, risked their lives to prevent another Chernobyl-scale disaster. Thater’s Chernobyl Redux felt, whether by design or by serendipity, like a silent cry against the dangers that not only humanity, but whole ecosystems may yet face.
Standing in that ‘loud’ silence, bathed in the light of the projections and the darkness of the unfolding stories, I heard my inner voice telling me to write. This is not just an artwork – it is a mirror, a memorial, a time capsule urging us to learn from a tragedy that continues to speak to the world. I hope we listen.
Diana Thater, Chernobyl Redux (2023), Luma Westbau, Limmatstrasse 270, 27 September 2024–19 January 2025