Snapshot Dialogue: Lesia Pchólka (Berlin) and Uladzimir Hramovich (Berlin)
As part of its 25th Anniversary Celebrations, ARTMargins Online hosts a series of short dialogues between critics and curators from Eastern Europe and one or several artists. With this series of conversations, we want to shed light on the challenging political and economic conditions under which artists and other producers of culture in the region operate today, yet we also aim to highlight the amazing vibrancy, resilience, and resourcefulness of its art scenes.
This conversation between Researcher of art migration from Belarus, Sasha Razor (Los Angeles) and Berlin-based Belarusian artists Lesia Pchólka and Uladzimir Hramovich focuses on the artists’ engagement with the tumultuous events during the 2020 protests in Belarus that followed a contested presidential election and led to widespread political repression. Many artists found themselves at the forefront of these events, using their art as a form of protest and documentation. Pchólka and Hramovich address their journey into exile, the impact of political turmoil on their artistic practices, and their experiences navigating the complexities of migration.
Sasha Razor: When I think about the trajectory of Belarusian artists since 2020, I’m reminded of the waves of migration from the former Russian empire – how displacement became both a burden and a source of creative transformation. I’ve been following both of your journeys closely, particularly how you’ve managed to maintain your artistic practice while in constant motion. Could you tell me about your path to Berlin? When did you finally arrive there?
Uladzimir Hramovich: We arrived in Berlin in 2022. I received a scholarship, which supports artists in exile from regions experiencing political repression and conflict. That’s how we made our way here.
SR: This reminds me of conversations I had with other displaced artists in Berlin from multiple countries. There’s something peculiar about the way artistic residencies designed as temporary creative spaces have become de facto refugee programs for artists from zones of conflict and repression. How many residencies did you navigate before finding more stable ground in Berlin? The trajectory itself must have shaped your work. How many residencies did you go through before settling in Berlin?
Lesia Pchólka: We lived in several places—cities in Ukraine, Poland, and briefly in Georgia. We spent most of our time in Poland before coming to Berlin. Initially, we thought we would eventually return to Belarus, so we moved from one residency to another, holding onto that hope. But after the war started—the Russian invasion of Ukraine—many residencies began refusing Belarusian artists.
SR: How did it come about that you had to leave Belarus?
UH: In early 2021, we were detained after staging a small action. We had made a poster and gone outside to take pictures and send them to our backyard chat room (during the 2021 protests, people connected via “backyard” telegram chats) , but we were detained. I was jailed for fifteen days, while Lesia was released after two days with a fine. Then, one evening, the police came to Lesia’s parents’ house looking for her, and we realized we had to leave the country.
LP: We were active in the protests from the very beginning. We collected signatures, I supervised at polling stations, we organized protest actions—we were very involved. After our detention, they had our information, and the repressions intensified. We didn’t want to leave, but we felt we had no choice. We stayed for two more months and left in the spring of 2021.
SR: Your experience echoes what I’ve been documenting across the post-Soviet space – this pattern of authorities targeting artists not just for explicit political work, but for any form of independent expression. The fact that you were detained for sharing images in a neighborhood chat is particularly telling. Could you walk me through that time in your lives and how it changed your understanding of what was possible in Belarus?
LP: During that time, it wasn’t so much about art in the traditional sense. I was photographing, doing video documentation, making posters—we were focused on immediate reactions rather than deep reflection. There was no time to analyze. Journalists had limited access, so I shared my photos on Facebook, and they were published in various European media. Many people around us were doing the same. It was a horizontal practice; everyone was involved in the art of protest as much as possible.
SR: One thing that’s fascinated me about the 2020 protests is how thoroughly they were documented, despite – or perhaps because of – the absence of traditional media. When I look at protest documentation from the Soviet period, we have relatively few images, and they’re often from official sources. But in Belarus, there was this explosion of citizen documentation. As artists working in this moment, how did you navigate the tension between creating art and creating historical records? What do you think has changed in art during these protests?
UH: The biggest change is that we did many things publicly. Before, everything existed in closed groups. In 2020, art and artists literally and figuratively took to the streets. It was a turning point when artists showed themselves openly.
LP: It reminded me of the 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, without social media or printers, people drew slogans by hand. It was an important part of the movement.
SR: How did leaving Belarus and moving between short-term residencies affect your state of mind and ability to create?
LP: We were in a difficult psychological situation, which you don’t feel immediately. It’s one thing to go to a residency when you can return home, and another when you’re essentially refugees, leaving everything behind with no choice. We lived in small hotel rooms, making do with what we had. But it was wonderful to have a place to stay for a longer period. It helped me find work and do an exhibition at the Gdańsk City Gallery. Having that stability, even temporarily, allowed us to create new work.
UH: Short-term residencies were challenging, especially given our state of mind. We created some projects, but it was hard to adapt. Looking back, I went through a serious crisis related to migration and displacement. It took time to adjust, but eventually, we began to receive new invitations to exhibitions that weren’t related to Belarus or Belarusians, which helped us feel more integrated.
SP: I’ve been following your exhibition trajectories during this period of displacement with great interest. The Venice Biennale has always been a fascinating barometer of how we conceptualize national identity in art, and in 2022 it seemed particularly resonant with the themes of migration and borderlessness. You both participated in two of the Biennial’s non-traditional pavilions that challenged the notion of national representation, the “Yiddishland Pavilion,” and the “European Pavilion” which explores how architecture and public spaces can represent the evolving cultural identity of the European Union. Could you tell me about your experiences creating work for these spaces during such a tumultuous period?
UH: I was part of the “Yiddishland Pavilion,” a parallel pavilion at the Venice Biennale focused on the cultural and historical significance of Yiddish-speaking Jewish communities. I was invited by curators Yevgeniy Fiks and Maria Veits to participate in this pavilion. My project focused on Hirsh Lekert, a Jewish revolutionary from the Bund Party and shoemaker in Vilnius, and Abram Brazer, a Belarusian-Jewish sculptor who created a statue of Lekert Minsk in the 1930s. That sculpture was later destroyed by the Soviets, which became a central theme of my work—exploring how histories, particularly Jewish ones, are erased under oppressive regimes. Through this piece, I examined the fragility of cultural memory and the loss of these figures’ legacies.
SR: The European Pavilion has always struck me as an interesting experiment in reimagining national identity through art. Here you are, Belarusian artists unable to return home, showing work on a platform that explicitly questions the nature of national boundaries. There’s something almost painfully relevant about that intersection. Lesya, could you tell me more about how another work of yours, the installation Heimat (2022), engaged with these layers of displacement?
LP: This project stemmed from my experience volunteering as a translator at the Polish-Ukrainian border during the first month of the war. Together with artist and activist Jana Shostak, we helped people crossing the border with Poland. This experience had a profound impact on me. I witnessed people wrapped in blankets calmly moving forward despite the uncertainty that lay ahead. The installation reflects on themes of migration, history, and personal narratives, focusing on ordinary people who create history through their journeys.
SR: Uladzimir, your points about the Soviet heritage touch on something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: how differently the post-Soviet states metabolize their shared Soviet past. Ukrainians, especially during this war, take down Soviet monuments, while Belarus has these monuments intact. But you’re suggesting something more nuanced than simple preservation or destruction. Could you elaborate on how you envision engaging critically with this heritage without erasing it?
Uladzimir Hramovich, Katharina von Hagenow, Ruins of Belarus, exhibition poster
UH: We have different perspectives on this issue. Our main problem is Russian imperialism—the view of Belarus as inferior. The Soviet heritage is part of our culture; we wouldn’t want to destroy it. We need to reassess and critically engage with it, but not erase it entirely. My upcoming exhibition, Ruins of Belarus, is about this.
LP: In Belarus, we face constant erasure of our culture. We move from one ruin to another, so preserving what we have is important to us. Ukraine’s situation is different; they have regions that didn’t experience the Soviet Union in the same way, and they have more resources to engage in such debates.
SR: How have your relationships with Russian and Ukrainian artists changed since the beginning of the war? Uladzimir, I remember that during the first days of the war you published a letter answering the Russian artist Arseny Zhilyaev calling him out for Russian imperialism.
UH: Yes, I reread our dialogue with Arseny not so long ago, and it is still relevant, after almost three years of war. I think the problems lie very deep, and it’s not just a misunderstanding. Russian artists generally either didn’t know about Belarusian artists, or at least they didn’t show interest in our work. And even now, we remain in their blind spot. They only notice us when they see us in Berlin, Paris or London. But I want to say that this is not a bad thing, and it is because of this invisibility (along with other factors) that our country and culture have survived at all. We were able to live and create in the shadow of Russia. The war and revolution have changed people’s thinking, including ours. We see imperialism more clearly now, and it’s hard to maintain contact under these circumstances.
LP: We’ve never had strong connections with Russian artists. We didn’t have contact or projects with them. Our collaborations were mostly with Polish and Ukrainian artists. Some people distanced themselves for a while, but overall, our relationships with Ukrainian artists have remained supportive.
SR: I’ve been particularly intrigued by your latest project By Law which captures something essential about the intersection of personal life and state power in exile. It reminds me of stories I documented here in LA about Soviet Jewish refugees in the 1970s who had to get divorced in the USSR to allow one spouse to leave though fictitious marriage, only to then remarry once they were abroad. The way bureaucracy becomes both an obstacle and raw material for art is fascinating. Could you tell me about how this project emerged from your own experience trying to marry in exile, and how you transformed what must have been a frustrating, even traumatic process into an artistic statement?
LP: The project evolves around our attempt to get married while in exile. We tried to obtain the necessary documents in Gdańsk, but faced numerous bureaucratic obstacles. Going to the Belarusian embassy wasn’t safe for us due to the political situation. We lacked basic rights that many people take for granted.
UH: We collected all the paperwork—court documents, affidavits, administrative papers—and incorporated them into our installation. The documents are printed on silk and form part of the artwork. The project highlights the absurdities and challenges faced by refugees and displaced persons navigating legal systems in different countries.
LP: By Law has been shown at the Museum of Migration in Gdynia, Poland, and now it’s part of an upcoming group exhibition curated by Zofia Nierodzińska. The exhibition focuses on migration and includes artists from various backgrounds who explore themes related to displacement and identity. We’re showing the work in Berlin, and we’re excited to present it to a new audience.
SR: I’m struck by how your experience reflects a larger pattern in Belarusian cultural history, a cycle of creation in exile, of maintaining cultural memory from abroad. Yet your generation is doing this in the age of digital archives and instant communication, which creates different possibilities than your predecessors had. How do you see your work in relation to this longer tradition of Belarusian artists working in exile?
LP: Since emigrating, I’ve had the opportunity to work with gallery spaces—an experience I deeply cherish. This has significantly aided my development of visual skills. Previously, my focus was on meaning, participatory practices, and activism. Now, everything has shifted. Through images, I build a dialogue with the viewer, using visual language to communicate without language barriers about topics close to my heart, such as aspects of Belarussian history that have been overlooked or forgotten. I also continue to work independently with archives, treating photography as a form of documentation. My future plans include publishing more printed magazines and books about Belarus in English. I’ve come to realize how little information is available to foreigners about the current situation in Belarus, and how challenging it is for them to access such information.
UH: It’s challenging to contemplate the future, especially given the way the current war obscures our vision. Some of us are restoring archives, others are working with memory, and still others are creating new literary works. This situation, while unusual for Belarus on such a scale, is not entirely unique. A significant portion of Belarusian culture now exists abroad, while what remains within the country struggles to find its voice. In a sense, I’m personally trying to speak out and restore a semblance of what existed before—to give voice to artists like Abram Brazer, who were silenced by previous regimes. We’re attempting to present a polyphony of voices, though I’m unsure how successful we’ll be. Nonetheless, we have plenty of work ahead of us. These voices have been silent for far too long.
SR: Your work embodies what the writer Milan Kundera called “the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Through your artistic practice, personal documents become public testimony, bureaucratic obstacles transform into silk installations, and the experience of exile generates new forms of cultural memory. Thank you both for for illuminating vital intersections between art, memory, and resistance, and I look forward to seeing how your work continues to evolve and shape the narrative of contemporary Belarusian art.
LP: Thank you, Sasha. We appreciate the opportunity to talk about our journey.
UH: Yes, thank you for giving us this platform to share our story.
The conversation was conducted on Zoom in October 2024. Translation by Sasha Razor.
View the remaining Snapshot Dialogues in this series:
https://artmargins.com/snapshot-dialogue-blackwood-chemerska-mirchevska/
https://artmargins.com/conversation-boris-kostadinov-and-kamen-stoyanov/
https://artmargins.com/snapshot-dialogue-svitlana-biedarieva-and-lesia-khomenko/
Sasha Razor
Lesia Pchólka
Lesia Pchólka is a Belarusian visual artist and activist based in Berlin and Bielsk Podlaski. She is the founder of the VEHA Archive, dedicated to preserving Belarusian vernacular photography and exploring collective memory. Pcholka’s work bridges archival practice, migration narratives, and social transformation, using photography, video, and installations to examine undocumented histories and political trauma. Her projects connect cultural heritage with contemporary migration and displacement, reflecting on identity and resilience in the face of authoritarianism and exile.
