Art and Culture

Our Art and Culture Program brings together cultural and creative practitioners and Loss and Damage actors to explore the role that art and culture can play in addressing and raising awareness of the needs to address loss and damage from climate change.

For enquiries directly related to the Art and Culture Program please contact the Project Lead at: teo [@] lossanddamagecollaboration.org

Please also find the project's concept note here.

Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage

In 2023 we launched the Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage program which has since delivered an online artistic research residency, a series of public events, a set of commissioned texts, and an online symposium with the intention of facilitating a transdisciplinary exchange around the issue of loss and damage caused by the climate crisis. Following the completion of the program in 2025 a set of recommendations was also published.

Visit the Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage website to find out more about the program : https://www.waysofrepair.com/

The Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage program was generously supported by the Open Society Foundations.

Artist in Residence

The Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage artist research residency sort three artists and/or curators, (applying as individuals or as collectives) working within any medium to embark on new or ongoing artistic research projects engaging with Loss and Damage.

Following the open call, which received over 740 applications, three project proposals were selected for development through the program's artistic research residency. During the residency the selected artists received a stipend of 12,600 USD, tailored mentoring, monthly support sessions and opportunities to interact with the program's speakers. Each resident was also invited to join the L&DC as a member to enable them to participate in the Collaborations working groups and to make connections with Loss and Damage actors from other disciplines.

Each selected artist, or artist collaboration, was tasked with producing a digital restitution of their artistic research and also to present during a dedicated session in the Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage online symposium.

The selected artists and artist collaboration for the inaugural Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage artistic research residency were:

1. Gabriela de Matos — Candomblé Terreiros: Sacred Shields Against Salvador’s Climate Crisis (see the digital restitution here and symposium session here).

2. Nombuso Mathibela & Sibonelo Gumede — Phoshoza (see the digital restitution here and symposium session here).

3. Zahra Malkani — A Ubiquitous Wetness (see the digital restitution here and symposium session here).

Public Program

Taking place online between January 2024 and January 2025, the Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage public online program presented three workshops exploring the following themes:

Texts of Repair

In addition to the artists research program, Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage commissioned three critical thinkers from the arts and humanities to explore different perspectives, aesthetic explorations, knowledges and lived experiences of the climate crisis in relation to Loss and Damage.

The commissioned texts are intended to provide conceptual frameworks and critical links between the Loss and Damage discourse and themes already being widely explored within the arts and humanities in response to the combined climate, human rights, and environmental crisis, and the drive towards decolonization.

Once completed the selected critical thinkers presented their text in dedicated sessions of the Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage online symposium. The three commissioned critical thinkers and their text are:

Alexis Pauline Gumbs — Tell the Others (see the presentation here).
Dr. Farhana Sultana — Decolonizing Climate Knowledge: Repairing Epistemic Injustice and Loss in the Era of Climate Change (see the presentation here).
T. J. Demos — Gaza Genocide, Climate Colonialism, and Survival Media: What it would Mean to Repair Loss and Damage (see the presentation here).

In January 2025, the Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage online symposium held nine sessions between the 20 and 29th of January— during which the commissioned critical thinkers presented their “Texts of Repair”, the artists in residence presented the research and three transdisciplinary panel discussions were convened. The nine sessions were:

T.J. Demos — Gaza Genocide, Climate Colonialism, and Survival Media: What it would Mean to Repair Loss and Damage
Alexis Pauline Gumbs — Tell the Others
Farhana Sultana — Decolonizing Climate Knowledge: Repairing Epistemic Injustice and Loss in the Era of Climate Change
Zahra Malkani — A Ubiquitous Wetness
Nombuso Mathibela and Sibonelo Gumede — Phoshoza
Gabriela De Matos — Candomblé terreiros: Sacred Shields Against Salvador’s Climate CrisisA Ubiquitous Wetness
Panel discussion #1: T.J. Demos, Vivien Sansour, Nombuso Mathibela and Sibonelo Gumede — Sonic and Sensorial Archives of Survival Against Climate Violence
Panel discussion #2: Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Zahra Malkani — Transforming Loss: Mourning and Ritual in Times of Climate Crisis
Panel discussion #3: Farhana Sultana, Gabriela De Matos, and Amali Tower, — Decolonising Climate Coloniality and Re-Centering Marginalised Voices and Knowledges

To see the details of each session and the biographies of each speaker please see the symposium webpage here.

Symposium

T.J. Demos — Gaza Genocide, Climate Colonialism, and Survival Media: What it would Mean to Repair Loss and Damage
Alexis Pauline Gumbs — Tell the Others
Farhana Sultana — Decolonizing Climate Knowledge: Repairing Epistemic Injustice and Loss in the Era of Climate Change
Zahra Malkani — A Ubiquitous Wetness
Nombuso Mathibela and Sibonelo Gumede — Phoshoza
Gabriela De Matos — Candomblé terreiros: Sacred Shields Against Salvador’s Climate CrisisA Ubiquitous Wetness
Panel discussion #1: T.J. Demos, Vivien Sansour, Nombuso Mathibela and Sibonelo Gumede — Sonic and Sensorial Archives of Survival Against Climate Violence
Panel discussion #2: Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Zahra Malkani — Transforming Loss: Mourning and Ritual in Times of Climate Crisis
Panel discussion #3: Farhana Sultana, Gabriela De Matos, and Amali Tower, — Decolonising Climate Coloniality and Re-Centering Marginalised Voices and Knowledges

To see the details of each session and the biographies of each speaker please see the symposium webpage here.

Team Members

Co-Coordinator

Lena Dobrowolska

Lena is an artist-researcher, filmmaker and educator who has been working on issues relating to political ecology and climate change for over a decade. Her current research focuses on co-creative documentation and inclusive digitalisation of intangible losses due to the climate crisis in the context of planned relocation. She has interests in decolonial and ecofeminist perspectives on climate and anticolonial research methodologies. Lena is a PhD Researcher at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, UWE Bristol, a Research Associate with Culture and Climate Change at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield and lectures in MA Digital Direction at the Royal College of Art.

Co-Coordinator

TEO ORMOND-SKEAPING

Teo is an award-winning artist, filmmaker and photographer working on projects relating to, amongst other things, non-economic loss and damage, the governmentality of Loss and Damage and climate-induced migration. Teo also works to coordinate the Loss and Damage Collaboration’s Advocacy and Outreach work and Human Mobility and Displacement working group.

Co-Coordinator

Phoebe-Lin Elnan

Phoebe is a writer and performer who sometimes makes work with and/or about food. She holds a master's in Visual Art from the CCC Research Program at the HEAD, Geneva and has worked as a creative producer at arts and environmental non-profit organisation Coalition for a Cultural Ecology (COAL), Paris. Phoebe is part of the collective as slow as possible that curates exhibitions in Espace 3353 in Geneva.