Rounding out my first visit to Almaty with a very special afternoon at the Oral Tansykbayev College of Decorative and Applied Arts, the oldest institution of art education in Kazakhstan. I’m deeply grateful to the wonderful faculty and students for such a warm welcome and for the thoughtful, lively engagement during my talk. I was also touched to receive a beautiful dombra (a two-stringed instrument that is the country’s national instrument) from my dear friend Indira Kalinekovna, a generous and meaningful gift that carries a little piece of Kazakhstan home with me. It made it safely to Sydney, and I can’t wait to learn how to play it!
It was an honour to be hosted by the distinguished Temirbek Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts last Monday for an artist talk. What a pleasure to meet and engage with the Academy’s wonderful community, and to have the opportunity to share my practice with such an engaged audience. I was especially impressed by the incredible talent and dedication of the students and artists I encountered during my visit. Thank you for the generous welcome and for making my visit so memorable. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, and learn from the vibrant arts community in Almaty.
Many thanks especially to the faculty and leadership who organised the talk. Front row from left to right – • Docent: Suleimenov Mukhamedzhan Shadykhanovich• Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Fine Arts: Turgynbay Bolat• Dean of the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Design: Baidilda Bauyrzhan Nurbekovich• Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Arman Adilkhanuly Zhudebayev• Docent: Tainov Serik• Professor of the Department of Fine Arts: Duzelkhanov Agymsaly Duzelkhanov• Master of Art History, Senior Lecturer : Kehzhebaeyeva Leila Abduganievna.And big hugs to dearest Uzbekova Indira Kalinekovna for making these relationships happen, and to my intrepid translator Dariya Nurzhankyzy. I hope to see you all again soon!
September 6th, Sunday, was a beautiful day of sharing, listening, and imagining at the esteemed Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where I facilitated a creative writing workshop entitled “Petrichor: Writing with the Scent of Rain” as part of ARTBAT FEST SØZ, the 2026 educational and public program of the long-running ARTBAT FEST contemporary art festival, organised in collaboration with Tselinny.
Thank you to the wonderful Tselinny team for hosting me, and especially to all the participants who generously shared their ideas and creative responses. It was particularly meaningful for me to experience these works across English, Kazakh, and Russian — a reminder of how art can create spaces for exchange across languages and cultures.
I am excited to carry these contributions forward, incorporating the outcomes of the workshop into future exhibitions and articles as part of my ongoing research and artistic practice.
Thank you, рақмет, and Спасибо for your generosity, curiosity, and imagination. Hope to see you all again soon! 💚
WUF Academy Online Classroom is now live and open to public access, extending the learning beyond WUF13 Baku. Find my lecture slides in Dialogue 4, free to download.
It’s cool to see The Sewer Soaperie and The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store cited in this journal article in Duke University Press’ Environmental Humanities, by Dr. Katherine Burlingame which talks about a new Romanticism for a damaged planet. Thank you!
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The Sewer Soaperie is a project that turns fatbergs into soap. The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store is a perfume line of things we can lose because of climate change.
Citations
Young, Catherine Sarah. The Sewer Soaperie. 2016. Young, Catherine Sarah. The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store. 2014. Katherine Burlingame; Bewilderment: A New Romanticism for a Damaged Planet. Environmental Humanities 1 July 2026; 18 (2): 430–450. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-12384010
Hosted by the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
The 2026 conference theme, Haereka (pronounced high-reh-kah), means journey. It honours the journeys of those who came before us, including generations of Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, and Ngāi Tahu people who traversed and first settled the mountain ranges, plains, and coastlines of Te Waipounamu (South Island).
Panel: Sensory Journeys: Traversing Culture, Environment and Perception through Sensory Art
We warmly invite proposals from researchers, artists, curators, designers, and practitioners exploring the role of the senses in shaping artistic practice, environmental engagement, cultural knowledge, and perception.
The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) is the national professional body for Australian and New Zealand art historians, bringing together academics, postgraduate students, artists, designers, and gallery and museum professionals.
Huge congratulations to the team at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on the launch of the redesigned Thirteen Artists Awards website!
The CCP Thirteen Artists Awards (TAA) is a prestigious triennial Philippine art award established in 1970. Administered by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, it honors outstanding young visual artists whose innovative practices and works contribute significantly to the development of contemporary Philippine art.
Hat tip to my fellow 2021 artists! I’m happy and honored that The Weighing of the Heart, a sculptural series that cast the ashes of the 2019-2020 Australian Black Summer, was exhibited for this milestone.
It is a pleasure to have The Sewer Soaperie included in this beautifully installed exhibition. My deepest thanks to curators Kuang Yi Ku and Davey Lin. Friends in Taiwan, please check it out!
The Sewer Soaperie (2016- ) is an artscience project that turns fatbergs into soap.
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Exhibition Name: Contaminations: Towards a Science Gallery Period: 2026.06.01 MON. – 07.09 THU. Venue: NYCU Gallery, Hsinchu, Taiwan Curator: Ku Kuang Yi with Lin Cheng Wei (Davey)
Curatorial Statement
Looking back at the history of science, the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin was, in fact, the result of an experimental contamination.
When we speak of contamination, we may think of plastic micro-particles, viruses, or space debris. At the same time, contamination also signifies a disturbance of boundaries, or the infiltration, staining, and hybridization between two entities. Such interactions may appear negative, yet they also represent opportunities for transformation. Art & Science Collaboration functions in a similar way: seemingly disruptive to each other’s methodologies, yet capable of merging into entirely new possibilities.
This exhibition unfolds across two main sections. On the first floor, the area titled “Towards a Science Gallery” presents the team’s research on global institutions of Art & Science Collaboration through richly illustrated panels. It highlights twelve exemplary cases drawn from universities, research institutes, and cultural organizations, offering comparative analyses of their models. An interactive game further invites visitors to step into the role of a resource-holder, experimenting with diverse choices to construct their own vision of an ideal science gallery.
Extending to the second floor, the thematic section “Contamination” takes pollution as its central keyword. It features works by seven international artists who have previously participated in global Science Gallery exhibitions, alongside six student groups from NYCU’s interdisciplinary courses, and one collaborative team formed by fiber artist Lin Tzu Fen and the Microplastic Risk Communication Group at NYCU’s Institute of Science, Technology and Society. Together, they transform pressing issues—such as global water pollution, microplastic contamination, and air pollution, as well as infectious diseases like mosquito-borne illnesses and HIV—into diverse artistic creations.
In Taiwan today, collaborations between art and science remain relatively rare. Do we truly need such an exhibition model? If so, what strategies should we adopt to build sustainable systems and foster international exchange? This exhibition invites audiences to reflect, to question, and to spark new dialogues together.
What happens if we lose the arts? We lose the ability to imagine our planet beyond collapse.
This was my main message at my interactive lecture at the inaugural WUF Academy Schoolyard at the Thirteen Session of the World Urban Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan. My talk was entitled, “Imagining Future Resilient Communities: Artistic Research at the Intersection of Climate and Housing” — exploring how arts and culture can help communities imagine, feel, and build more resilient futures in times of climate crisis.
Together, we explored how artistic research, artscience, and design can help us imagine future resilient communities in a time of climate crisis and rapid urban change. Participants smelled a scent from The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store, contemplated lost public spaces through one of my PhD works, The Weighing of the Heart by passing around one of my heart sculptures cast from the ashes of the Australian bushfires, reflected on waste and infrastructure through The Sewer Soaperie by meeting a baby fatberg I somehow got through security (sealed in acrylic, nobody panic), and joined an SD-Moji workshop that has now become part of a new WUF13 dataset.
From left to right: scents of the climate crisis; sculpture made from the ashes of Australia, a baby fatberg, SD-moji data set by the participants
Takeaways:
Arts and culture are not supplementary to climate resilience — they are foundational to it.
Participatory artistic practices can build cultural intelligence and strengthen social resilience.
Critical thinking emerges through embodied and sensory engagement, not only data and policy.
Local knowledge and creative improvisation are already forms of climate adaptation.
If we want resilient futures, we must protect humanity’s capacity to collectively imagine them.
The erosion of the arts is also an erosion of democratic imagination, empathy, and the ability to envision alternatives during an era of cascading crises.
Also, a special shoutout to the incredible Gen Z volunteers and staff of World Urban Forum 13—the lifeblood of WUF. Thank you for your hard work, energy, dedication, and the countless long hours you gave to make this gathering possible. In a time when the world can feel tumultuous and uncertain, meeting all of you gave me real hope for the future. What stays with me most is your deep love for your country. Seeing Azerbaijan through your eyes has been inspiring, and I’m thinking of all of you as I continue exploring this beautiful place. Now that WUF is over, the entire country can finally get some rest. I hope our paths cross again somewhere in the world.
Thank you to everyone who participated so openly and generously, to the UN-Habitat team for making space for art, artscience, and design within the World Urban Forum. How cool to see the arts have a seat at the table in conversations about the future of our cities and planet.
I am honoured and excited to have spoken at the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group Symposium at the University of Cambridge next week. I presented my talk, ‘Atmospheric Storytelling: Scent, Petrichor, and Ecocultural Knowledge’, specifically the Olfactory Wheel for the Critical Zone and Martian Petrichor projects. Thank you for having me!
Catherine Sarah Young 