Born in 1982, Sergiy Lebedynskyy is old enough to recollect the fall of the USSR. As an adult witness to ongoing turmoil, his work explores the tension between the current cultural nostalgia amid political conflict. In the project „Healing Spring“ he uses a public thermal spa located on Arabat spit in Ukraine as a metaphor for his country's difficult navigation of its changing political and cultural terrain. The Arabat Spit is a narrow strip of land that separates a large and shallow system of saltwater lagoons from the Sea of Azov. Located between the Henichesk Strait to the north, and the northeastern shores of Crimea to the south, the spit was abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but in the past two decades slowly regained a use as a health resort and beach by Ukrainian and Russian lower-middle classes.
