Interview with Artist Alina Hubarenko: Restore the Viewer’s Relationship with the Ocean
Watch the interview with Alina Hubarenko, winner of the 2026 Under the Sea Restore the Viewer’s Relationship with the Ocean category.
Alina Hubarenko is a Ukrainian-German artist based in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Born in Kyiv in 1991, she came to painting through a winding path, early art studies in Ukraine, a full medical degree, and eventually a return to her practice. She works in oil, building up fine layers of detail until what begins as near-abstraction resolves into a seascape. The sea is her constant subject, not as scenery, but as symbol: a quieter counterworld to the speed and noise of contemporary life. Her work has been shown internationally, including at the Royal Society of Marine Artists Annual Exhibition in London and the Beijing International Art Biennale 2025.
Q. If you could be any ocean creature, what would you be and why?
A seahorse.
“Their truly remarkable biological claim to fame, however, is that male seahorses and sea dragons get pregnant and bear young—a unique adaptation in the animal kingdom.”
NOAA. How do seahorses differ from all other animals?, National Ocean Service website.