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Meet Stanislava Pinchik: The Money-Can't-Buy Tattoo Artist

Florence Welch and Sam Smith are fans - by Saskia Tillers
  • 26 Sep 2019
Meet Stanislava Pinchik: The Money-Can't-Buy Tattoo Artist

Stanislava Pinchuk has always played by her own rules. From early days roaming the streets of Melbourne armed with a spray can, to her passion project tattooing friends and her refusal to stick to one artistic medium, Pinchuk isn’t your typical paintbrush-wielding artist. “I’m just a really terrible brat who does what she wants,” she says with a laugh. “I think everything I do is a rebellion. It’s the role of artists. I’ve always been this  part-cerebral, part-visceral, partconventional, part-disruptive thing.”

Pinchuk, 31, has been on the road for as long as she can remember. Australia to New York, back to Oz for  48 hours, Sarajevo for a few days, then Rome, Florence and now Milan, before heading to Venice tomorrow. “Shit dude, it’s been a long week,” she sighs, when we meet at a cafe in Milan’s Chinatown. Wearing a black slip dress with layers of fine gold pendants skimming her collarbones, she is make-up free, save for a vibrant splash of red lipstick. Resting one elbow on the plastic floral tablecloth, Pinchuk takes a sip of her Americano coffee. “I’m not good at being in one place,” she says. “I find routines a bit scary. Maybe it’s being one person between many cultures. This hybrid, you know?” Since moving to Australia from Ukraine at age 10,  Pinchuk admits she’s never felt rooted to one particular place, instead preferring a nomadic lifestyle. “I’ve never had a strong sense of home, even where I was raised. But I’m lucky, because growing up like this made me feel at home anywhere in the world.”

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Immigration Granulation : Tattoos and jewellery forming a single composition. { 'When skin is tattooed, it undergoes the medical process of granulation to heal itself. Capillary vessels form into small beads, as new connective tissue forms over the wound. Curiously, jewellers use the same granulation process in creating ornament. Gold is heated into a capillary reaction, and the resulting beads are fused into decorative patterns and arrangements over a metal surface. And of course, famers have always used the granulation process in the preparation of staple foods. - The following work considers the intersection of all three processes. Here, immigration journeys are tattooed and jewelled back onto the bodies that made them. While the two decorative elements create a single composition, looking closer - the gold granulations are made from the staple foods that the subjects ate throughout their journey. Rice grains and sesame for one; mustard, coffee beans or poppy seeds for another. In all, the works allude to the physical repair and nourishment the body needs from immigration journeys; as well as to toll they take. Immigration Granulation asks; is the tattoo the irreversible mark, while jewellery can be taken off? Or is a tattoo a temporary mark to inevitably perish, while jewellery outlives us to be passed on to the next generation? And hence, are migrations just temporary journeys or more permanent echoes in the world?' } > Here : K.S., - coffee & fennel. Made with my beautiful collaborator : @zaiba.khan / photographed by : @gavin__green - and now showing at the Immigration Museum of Australia until October 6, 2019 : @immigrationmuseum_melb

Living in Tokyo in her early 20s, Pinchuk started hammering maddeningly precise, intricate pinholes into white paper as a way of documenting her journeys around the city. When Ukraine was invaded in 2014, Pinchuk’s practice morphed into a wider exploration, mapping sites of trauma and conflict across the world, from Fukushima to Chernobyl – meticulously detailed yet vast ephemeral maps.

Before long, both the art and fashion worlds began paying attention. In 2010, the National Gallery of Australia started collecting her works, making her one of the youngest artists in the gallery’s collection. Forbes magazine included her in its 2018 “30 Under 30” list. Ignoring “old school gallerists” tut-tutting about her foray into fashion, Pinchuk has worked with an array of luxury brands including Nike, Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton and Chanel. When Neuw Denim commissioned her to hand-paint a series of leather jackets for Gigi Hadid, Cara Delevingne and  Kendall Jenner, among others, Pinchuk was not so impressed by the celebrity clientele, but excited by the prospect of “being able to paint tattoos my friends wouldn’t let me do on them”.

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Immigration Granulation : Tattoos and jewellery forming a single composition, with @zaiba.khan *** { 'When skin is tattooed, it undergoes the medical process of granulation to heal itself. Capillary vessels form into small beads, as new connective tissue forms over the wound. Curiously, jewellers use the same granulation process in creating ornament. Gold is heated into a capillary reaction, and the resulting beads are fused into decorative patterns and arrangements over a metal surface. And of course, farmers have always used the granulation process in the preparation of staple foods. - The following work considers the intersection of all three processes. Here, immigration journeys are tattooed and jewelled back onto the bodies that made them. While the two decorative elements create a single composition, looking closer - the gold granulations are made from the staple foods that the subjects ate throughout their journey. Rice grains and sesame for one; mustard, coffee beans or poppy seeds for another. In all, the works allude to the physical repair and nourishment the body needs from immigration journeys; as well as to toll they take. Immigration Granulation asks; is the tattoo the irreversible mark, while jewellery can be taken off? Or is a tattoo a temporary mark to inevitably perish, while jewellery outlives us to be passed on to the next generation? And hence, are migrations just temporary journeys or more permanent echoes in the world?' } *** Pictured here : Z.K., - cardamom, cloves, cinnamon bark. Made with my beautiful collaborator : @zaiba.khan / photographed by : @gavin__green - and now showing at the Immigration Museum of Australia until October 6, 2019 : @immigrationmuseum_melb

For the past decade, Pinchuk has tattooed mates at her studio with a sterilised needle and pot of ink, creating delicate constellations, tiny dots and lines. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I seem to be fixated on mediums that are punishing, painful, totally irreversible and unforgiving,” she shrugs. “But in the same way as my [art], I’m mapping back onto their bodies –living, breathing, sweating.”

Don’t bother trying to book an appointment, though: Pinchuk trades her designs only in exchanges with friends. “It’s a way to give my friends artworks they hold onto forever. Alternative economies help us recognise the ways we can support each other with kindness and community.” Homemade jam, help with her taxes, Arabic lessons and songs by Florence Welch and Sam Smith are just some of the trades she’s made. “When you open up a system of generosity, what you get back is so enriching. I couldn’t come to your nonna’s house and have dinner, even if I had all the money in the world. [Trading] has been the most rewarding thing I’ve done.”

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