Stanislava Ovchinnikova

Artistic projects
2026 / The Animal That Therefore You Made Me (Follow)
/ performance, public space intervention
2026 / A Performance for Two (Part 1/4)
/ durational performance, installation
2026 / A Performance for Two (Part 2/4) 
/ text-based performance, installation
2026 / A Performance for Two (Part 3/4)
/ sound-based performance, installation
2026 / A Performance for Two (Part 4/4)
/ premiere: 19.08.26 @ Amos Rex Museum, Helsinki
2026 / Untitled 
/ text, artistic commission of Pori Art Museum
2024-ongoing / Suspension in Other Terms
/ photography
2023 / Understanding The Urgency
/ lecture-performance
2023 / My Mother Told Me Not To Look Men In The Eye
/ video (silent)
2021 / Am I Dead Yet?
/ photography

Curatorial projects
2026 / Bark! (Volume 1) @ HIAP
2025 / Ukraine (working title) @ Critical Gallery, Turku, FI
2024 / 2 Years, 3657 Days @ Kaunas Artists’ House, LT
2023-2024 / Moving in Mayhem @ international touring


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stanislavaovchinnikova (at) gmail.com

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current:
A Performance for Two / Generation 2026 @ Amos Rex Museum
Untitled (text) / De Se - Attitude @ Pori Art Museum

upcoming:
Bark! (Volume 3) / 6.09 @ HIAP Community Room
Dwell Here Residency / September 2026 @ Irish Museum of Modern Art
Bark! (Exhibition) / November 2026 @ Gallery Augusta, HIAP

2021 / Am I Dead Yet? / photography

Am I Dead Yet? was a solo photography exhibition by Stanislava Ovchinnikova accompanied by a commissioned sound piece from the composer Andrey Novikov, and a program of lectures commissioned from Oleksii Karachynskiy and Den Humennyi. It took place in 2021 at PostPlay Lab (Kyiv, UA).

Photographic documentation: Anton Fedorov; images from the opening day and the artist talk between Stanislava Ovchinnikova and Andrey Novikov, moderated by Viktor Yankauskas. 2021
Am I Dead Yet? began as a series of recorded conversations with my colleagues and friends. Seventeen recordings were made in total. In those, stories were exchanged about burials in wedding dresses, childbirth as a near-death experience, and changes in human perception of mortality after the intake of (non-)medicinal drugs. These conversations informed the works created and chosen for the exhibition. Andrey Novikov, the invited composer, used fragments of these recordings to create the sound work which was heard in the exhibition space.

Listen to the sound piece:


To further develop the exhibition as a space for conversations on mortality, I invited Oleksii Karachynskiy—a practicing psychotherapist, scholar, war veteran, and co-founder of “Theatre of Displaced”—to give two lectures on how to talk about death with children and teenagers. Click on the titles below to be redirected to the Medium.com page with the Ukrainian-language transcriptions of the presented materials:

• How to talk to children about death? (Як розмовляти з дітьми про смерть?)
  
  Why is it important not to avoid this subject? How to explain to children that loved ones die, and how to do it in a non-traumatic way? Discussed here is also why children fear darkness and associate it with death.
  
  
• When does a person die? (Коли людина помирає?)
  
  The lecture studies the dichotomy between the known and unknown, as well as the juxtaposition of death and life/joy. It also tries to answer the question of why not everything that appears alive is alive, and why the majority of what we experience, think, and do is dead.

Photographic documentation: Natasha Fedorova; images from the lecture of Oleksii Karachynskiy. 2021

Another lecture, titled “How Cities are Born and How Do They Die,” was read by Den Humennyi—a curator of the performing arts space “PostPlay Lab,” leader of the international program “Citizens’ Theatre,” tutor, and performer who since 2011 has been a practitioner of a political/critical theatre as a playwright, director, and art-manager. The lecture covered the life cycle of a city, various urban planning concepts, and the connection between the "body of the city" and the social life of its citizens. Then, using the example of the Vynohradar neighborhood in Kyiv, Humennyi explored why some spaces feel "dead" even when they are formally still "alive." Finally, he reflected on how urban spaces can be revived through the tools of contemporary art. 

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Photographic documentation: Anton Fedorov; images from the lecture of Den Humennyi. 2021
The project was realized with the support of House of Europe and the program of the European Union “Moving Forward Together.”

© Stanislava Ovchinnikova, 2016 -