LESIA PCHOLKA
is a Belarusian research-based artist. Lives and works in Berlin/DE and Bielsk Podlaski/PL
Founder and curator of the VEHA archive. Part of swamp.center self-publishing platform
(1) research-based artist
(2) curator
(3) ______ cv / contact
Pcholka’s artistic practice combines archival methods, social engagement, collective memory and historical continuity to examine how the past shapes contemporary life in Belarus while situating Belarusian experiences within broader transnational contexts. Working across photography, video, and installation, she explores the tensions between official narratives and overlooked histories, creating space for voices that have been marginalized or silenced. Experiences of exile inform her reflections on belonging, displacement, and the fragility of memory, while a gender-conscious perspective shapes her attention to embodied experience and structures of power. Through community archives and experimental storytelling strategies, Pcholka constructs layered narratives that move between the personal and the political, the intimate and the collective, reimagining how histories are remembered, transmitted, and contested.
Although trained in academic painting at an art school and holding a degree in Social Psychology from Minsk Innovation University, she developed her artistic language largely outside of institutional frameworks, through self-organised initiatives and long-term collaborations with communities and informal archives.
She is an alumna of ArtPlatform programme (2018–19), Sputnik Photos Mentoring Programme (2020), John Smith Trust's 'Belarus Leaders in Exile' programme (2025) and has completed several programmes, including Biz4all (ODB Brussels & TNU Network University, 2016–17), the East-European School of Political Studies (2020–21), Family's Heritage: How to Understand and Preserve It at European Humanities University (2025).
In 2017, she founded the VEHA archive, an independent digital archive of 20th-century vernacular photography that collects and researches the visual history of Belarus based on family photoarchives.
From 2018 to 2020, she was a member of the Belarusian Association of Photographers.
In 2020-2021, she lectured the course Visual History of Everyday Life within the Public History concentration at ECLAB (European College of Liberal Arts in Belarus). From 2021 to 2024, she was a mentor on the Social Camp educational project. She regularly gives lectures, workshops, and talks on memory politics, and visual research at universities and cultural institutions, including Humboldt University (Berlin), Bard College (USA), Fundacja Archeologia Fotografii (PL) and others.
She was a member of the founding team of the Mochnarte Foundation in Poland. She served as Programme Director from 2023 to 2025 and was a member of the Rada(Foundation Council) from its establishment until 2026.
Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals, including KVOST (Berlin, DE), Museum of Emigration (Gdynia, PL) Circulations Festival (Paris, FR), IPMA Festival (Kaunas, LT), Copenhagen Photo Festival. It was also exhibited during the 60th Venice Biennale as part of The Other Session. She is the author of several photobooks, including Descent into the Marsh (2024), which was shortlisted for the Henri Cartier-Bresson Self-Published Photobook Award in 2026. Her work is held in the collections of the Günter Grass Gallery (Gdańsk), IoDeposito Gallery (Italy).
Her projects and photographs have been published in international media, including the BBC, Magnum Photos _ Magnum Flow, Phmuseum _ Featured Photobooks, ARTMARGINS, NN6T #164, NEWEAST, ICORN, Variant Magazine, The Calvert Journal, DEKODER / DEKODER, GUP Magazine, Sekktor.online, Post MoMA _ NY, BLOK, IoDeposito B#S, RTV Magazin, SZUM, CISR e.V. platform, KubaParis and Contemporary Art Library. In printed matter in EIKON #123, FROM THE FOLDINGS #0, Art & Politics by Offing Press; Hjärnstorm magazine #156, Tygodnik Powszechny, FAZ, pARTisanka magazine #34, as well as in the following books: NO.10 Sputnik Photos Mentoring Programme (2021); photos for Machinery of Dissent, by Alesia Rudnik (2025); illustrations for Antologia. Literatura na uchodźstwie, by the Willa Decjusza Institute (2025); A-P-P #5. The Strike Newspaper #5. Archiwum Protestów Publicznych.
She was selected for prestigious international residencies and fellowships, including Gaude Polonia, NCK (2025, 2019), Weltoffenes Berlin, Berlin Senate Department for Culture (2024), Memory Work, Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung (2023), ICORN. International Cities of Refuge Network (2021-22) as well as residencies at IASPIS(Stockholm, 2023); MuseumsQuartier Q21 (Vienna, 2022); Brno AIR. House of Arts (Brno, 2021); and Galeria Arsenal AIR (Bialystok, 2021).