ARTFORUM features Stanislava Pinkchuk,The Wine Dark Sea

10 May 2022

The 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art titled Free/State, curated by Sebastian Goldspink, presents 25 artists including Stanislava Pinkchuk and her poignant work The Wine Dark Sea.

Zoë De Luca, a writer of ARTFORUM, praises the exhibition for its prominent interconnections between the choreography of bodies through exhibitions and their movement across borders and countries. Synonoumously, The Wine Dark Sea explores themes of displacement, war tragedies and home. 

On the same days that Pinchuk’s birthplace Kharkiv was invaded, viewers at the Adelaide Biennial interpreted lines from Homer’s Odyssey and leaked files from Australia’s offshore detention centres to co-narrate the brutality enacted by the war on bodies and the nationwide pleas for homes. Her sculptural installation consists of engraved marble columns, simultaneously representing tombstones, plinths, and abstracted figures.

Born in 1988 in Kharkiv, Ukraine SSR, Pinchuk explores the changing topographies of war and conflict zones. Her multi-disciplinary approach using source materials of data, documentation, and detritus surveyed through fieldwork, reconsiders perceptions of geopolitical borders, migration, climate catastrophe and nuclear crises.

The Wine Dark Sea is currently on view at The Art Gallery of South Australia till 5 June 2022.

Image: Installation view of The Wine Dark Sea, 2020, marble, enamel, dimensions variable.