ABC Radio The Art Show Interviews Stanislava Pinchuk on her participation at Manifesta 14

5 Aug 2022

ABC News radio’s programme, The Art Show interviews Stanislava Pinchuk on her participation at Manifesta 14 in Kosovo.

Pinchuk’s large-scale installation titled Europe Without Monuments is located in the centre of the Ibar river, a divisive natural landmark that separates Kosovo between the Serbian north and the Albanian south.

Referencing Bogdan Bogdanović Monument to Fallen Miners to create a playground pavilion for people in the city, Pinchuk’s work grapples with the legacies of the difficult histories of the region, while providing a new space for people to reconcile and create new unified memories and narratives.

As Pinchuk says in the interview, “what’s extraordinary about [Bogdanović’s] monument… is that after the atrocities of the ’90s, the monument has become a very interesting dialogue on Fascism and genocide. But it has also become a very difficult monument for everybody and nobody”.

“The other aspect [to my work] was also a grief, and lamentation on how difficult monuments in Europe right now. In my home in Ukraine, there is so much skepticism on monuments, but also so much need for them. Our monuments today that still stand are sandbagged and scaffolded like this one, but perhaps in the empty space there is the idea that we can make something of the future, even very temporarily.”

Pinchuk’s Europe Without Monuments is on view at Ibar river, Mitrovica until 31 October 2022 as part of the 14th European Nomadic Biennial, Manifesta.

Image: Stanislava Pinchuk, Europe Without Monuments, 2022, steel & zinc, textile, acrylic paint and wood | Photography by Marcello Maranzan