Gallery Entry

THE SEA LOOKS BACK

By Ekaterina Umansky · IL

THE SEA LOOKS BACK is an original music film about the illusion of separation between humanity and the natural world. An orca is transformed into spectacle inside a world of theatre, beauty and human observation — until the direction of the gaze begins to reverse. The film is built around an original song written and performed by me. Music, voice and surreal moving imagery form a single narrative in which the boundaries between stage, aquarium and ocean gradually dissolve. What begins as an act of looking at another species becomes a confrontation with our own position as observers, consumers and participants in the living world. The work does not ask the viewer simply to feel sympathy for an animal. It asks a more uncomfortable question: what if the glass separating us from nature has always been imaginary?

Category

VIDEO

Approved

11 September 2026