Stanislava Pinchuk takes on Heide MoMA

Ukranian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk is blessing Melbourne with her latest exhibition titled Terra Data. Currently exhibiting at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Pinchuk features 40 artworks created in the past five years, including her iconic art spanning drawings and sculptures. This is the nomadic artist’s first career survey series, showcasing some of her most powerful data maps that capture the changing topographies of war and conflict zones. The topographic surveying projects feature Ukraine's eastern borders, and Kyiv, Fukushima, Chernobly and Calais.

Mont Icon hosts Mahmood Fazal and Daniel Stewart sat down with Pinchuk, discussing her grassroots with beekeeping in Chernobyl, her muse Nick Cave and her passion for writing.

Kicking off the third episode of Mont Icons, Pinchuk took a trip down memory lane, taking us back to when she first began making art.

“I started doing graffiti and street art when I was a teenager…. kind of really being punk rock… The whole DIY world was very much my kind of creative education and orientation. And then I'd sort of been making work for a while. And it was a lot about mapping…. it was very personal.”

She described the amalgamation of the anger and rage she felt when Ukraine was invaded and the indisputable evidence trail that was left behind in the rubble that first sparked the idea of mapping topography.

“When you see the ruins… it really made me think a lot about ideas of evidence. And I think that’s where the practice built on from because I didn’t really see people, whether academically or in the art work or as architects… it kind of kept echoing in these sort of autobiographical layers out from there.”

If you didn’t catch the episode, here’s a few rapid fire Q&As:

What do you like about beekeeping? What was it that you really enjoyed and when you’re in the motions of it, thought, this is so much deeper than honey?

“Completely, we’re really not going to survive without them, are we? You know, it’s such a primordial human thing we do. We talked out of Africa, we walked out with bees; we carried them with us. And they’ve been the basis of our agriculture since them...There’s also something beautiful about seeing how a beehive works and being able to tend to it and care for it.”

Was Tupac your first fanatical love?

“No no… Nick Cave I think was a big one… Every time I get stuck with artwork, I go back to Nick’s lyrics. When I need titles, when I need to clear my head; it’s like this pallet cleanser.”

What did Melbourne look like to you when you got here?

“You know what blew my mind? The plastic playgrounds blew my mind. And that people had carpets that went to the edge of the room. You know, the carpets that you can’t lift up, you can’t wash with soapy water and beat with a broom. That blew my mind.”

Also, be sure not to miss Terra Data at Heide MoMA. Come July it’ll be as good as gone. All information for the exhibition can be found on Heide’s website.