LAST SEEN SINCE 1970 (2025-ongoing)

In the group of watercolors LAST SEEN SINCE 1970 (2025-ongoing), Jermolaewa catalogues animals that are believed to have become extinct over the course of her lifetime. Where Jermolaewa has worked with forms of self-portraiture throughout her career, here, the artist is present through the absence of the 34 animals believed to have become extinct since 1970.

As previous works like Chernobyl Safari (2014/21) have dealt with human destruction of animal habitats, this vibrant and motley crew of animals is, on the one hand, a moving document of irrevocable loss. But in an artistic project concerned with the politics of visibility, and committed to even the seemingly outlandish possibility of hope, Jermolaewa stresses in painted captions that the pass stubfoot toad was last seen in 1986, the slender-billed curlew was last seen in 1995, the baji fresh-water dolphin last seen in 2001.

Insistent repetition again, and this time perhaps to suggest that human perception also has its limitations, that there are inevitable and expansive realms beyond it. A definition of faith: believing in what you can’t see. 

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