Yulia Pinkusevich: REGENERATRIX
Marlborough London
February 9th - March 23rd, 2024
Interview an video walkthrough of “Regeneratrix” a solo exhibition by Yulia Pinkusevich at Marlborough Lodon, on View Feb 8- March 23rd 2024. Video by Jonny Guardiani
Gallery Hours
Mon – Fri 10:00-17:30
Saturday 10:00-16:00
For general enquiries, please contact:
london@marlboroughgallery.com
Installation Photography by Eva Herzog
For her first solo exhibition in the UK, Marlborough artist Yulia Pinkusevich (b. 1982 Kharkiv, Ukraine, lives and works in California) will present recent paintings from two ongoing bodies of work, The Sakha Series and The Isorithm Series, which excavate the layers of her cultural identity as a former citizen of the USSR.
The exhibition takes its title from the writings of Marija Gimbutas, the late scholar of Archeo-mythology who asserted that Paleolithic and Neolithic civilizations were gynocentric. Gimbutas coined the term ‘Regeneratrix’ (and also the term ‘Creatrix’), as a substitute for the commonly used masculine versions of the words, ‘Regenerator’ and ‘Creator’, to describe the concept of the ‘goddess’ as understood in the Old European pantheon, with alternative feminine terminology.
Born in Ukraine under soviet occupation, Pinkusevich’s Sakha Series connects to her matrilineal ancestry, indigenous Siberians who likely practiced forms of shamanism in the Sakha region of Russia. The Sakha Series depicts the artist’s journey through time, meditating upon the connection with her ancient lineage of Eastern Europe and North Asia to explore spirituality as a source of lifeforce. The latest, largescale paintings focus on the existence of our nonhuman kin, particularly embodying the essence of elements such as fire, water, and air.
The second body of work presented in this exhibition is Pinkusevich’s Isorithm Series. The artist located a Cold War-era declassified military manual which gave step by step instructions on how to create maps that predict the impact of nuclear bomb airbursts showing fatal and non-fatal casualty isorithms over particular types of habitable regions. She was struck by the immense tension between the elegant geometries and rational calculations of these maps, juxtaposed against the irrational chaos and mass destruction they represent. In these works, Pinkusevich draws on her Ukrainian and Russian identity and the personal experience of growing up in the USSR at the end of the Cold War, as well as the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, to create marks made by gestures and physical movements that react to and synthesize the complex relationship between these two countries.
Exhibition and Interview videos by Jonny Guardiani