SILK MONUMENT

Installation.
Digital print on fabric (silk), 147 x 90 cm 

MAIDEN NAMES 

Collective embroidery of names based on an archival photograph.

2018 - 2021 

SILK MONUMENT 

 

Galerie intershop. Leipzig


 

The installation is a collage of photographs of women’s gravestone medallions – chipped, chipped, knocked down, decayed. I use photographs I took of gravestone portraits of women in cemeteries in Belarus, Ukraine and Poland. And I turn to history without (state) borders and the invisibility of the biography of each woman.

The form of the work is an image on the verge of a household tablecloth and a flag. Reminds us of the invisible history of everyday life, during wars, conflicts and disasters.

MAIDEN NAMES

Pcholka's embroidery project “Maiden Names” (2018) was exhibited at the Krylia kholopa [Wings of a Serf] gallery in Brest as a part of the collective exhibition Mother Matter. It aims to restore the names of women, often several generations, living under one roof, but under different surnames. By embroidering women’s maiden names on their archival images the artist reestablishes the lost genealogies. Maiden Names became the starting point for a series of workshops that Pcholka conducted online and offline under the title Embroidery Practices. This workshop was directed against the patriarchal system that coincided with mass protests led by women in Belarus. While the process in these international and intersectional workshops is more important than the product, the communicative component of this ongoing group project amplifies the voices of the embroiderers and allowed them to discuss the pressing socio-political issues in their own political contexts.