Stefania Bodnia – Artist in Residence
How do you work?
My work operates at the intersection of art and design, being informed by my engagement with historical, anthropological and material research and personal experiences. It takes the form of publications, installations, and prints. My research-based work manifests as visual poetry and engages with the materiality of typography and graphics, used as a tool to construct narratives that address history, society and personal experience. My exploration focuses on the power dynamics between the West and East, as well as the intersection of materiality, technology, geology, and power structures. Alongside these, I carry out projects that convey a sense of urgency and political relevance, emphasised by connections and origins informed by my background.
Fotos: Stefania Bodnia
You designed the cover for Publication Society of the Frontline: A Guidebook of Kyiv Perennial. How did you choose the visual language and what did you rely on in this artwork?
For the graphic identity of the Kyiv Biennial 2023 and Perennial, Aliona Ciobanu and I chose the metaphor of metal wires and knots to symbolise transformation amidst the chaos of ongoing war. These wires transform and merge to form different knots for each new exhibition. Through visual communication, the venue intertwines fragmented experiences to create a cohesive tapestry of shared artistic expression and resilience. Like a Gordian knot that is not easy to resolve. Incidentally, Gorbachev also used knot metaphor in Reykjavik in 1986 when discussing the Cold War — a vast, tangled web of nuclear weapons, mistrust and ideological confrontation that seemed impossible to untie.
For the book cover of the publication Society of the Frontline: A Guidebook of Kyiv’s Perennials, I decided to keep this metaphor, but to add a reflective afterword, as this book was intended. Over time, the steel changes colour – grey turns to red rust. This complements the idea of the vibrancy of shifting frontlines and war realities, highlighting the urgency of the matter.
How has your artistic practice generally changed with the start of russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine?
The political focus emerged early in my practice due to the impossibility of separating the situation from the geopolitical context of the grey zone in eastern Ukraine where I was raised. This area was first invaded in 2014, while I was still at secondary school. There is no distinction between my body and the numerous historical processes enacted through me. My identity reflects as a witness to all the events encoded in my body and memory.
I was studying in The Hague when the invasion happened in 2022. Living abroad at a distance, I had already started to reflect on my eastern Ukrainian identity. On the first day of the invasion, we formed a student collective to immediately start collecting funds for those in need. This was a form of activism, a way of taking direct action together in times of urgency. I then learned more sophisticated tools and a research approach that allowed me to talk poetically about micro and macro traumas, ideologies, and the interweaving of narratives from social, historical, scientific and political realms.
In November, the Kyiv Biennale “Vertical Horizon” will be held at the Lentos Museum in Linz, for which you are creating an installation in collaboration with sound artist Jack Dove. In The Hague (the Netherlands), you create a work of sound metal panels with graphics of landscapes of Donetsk region (Ukraine), complemented by sculptural natural elements and metal non-human objects. In particular, you use steel, coal, ash and graphite. Please tell us about the concept of your installation? How do you symbolically combine the space of cities and countries, as well as materials and sound? What story will your artwork tell the visitors or what questions will it ask?
Like the layers of sediment peeled back during precious metal and mineral mining, war operations leave behind a perforated landscape, resulting in a porous structure with voids and encapsulated spaces within the layers of the land. This audio-visual work draws parallels between personal trauma and geotrauma, where the layers of geological formations intersect with vectors of power, embodying the violence of extractive practices and war.
The imagery combines satellite footage of the mining area in eastern Ukraine, where military operations take place above and under ground; engravings of mineral porosity, and performative drawings of landscape. These layers of representation reveal the vertical continuum connecting the subterranean and the digital realms, spanning everything from mines to the cloud.
The project gives a voice to resources, including minerals, land, non-human entities and human labour. All of these are seen as material for the operations of power. Synthesised sounds and processed samples are constructed to move and momentarily distort the metal, placing reconstructions of unspoken memory and spirit into the steel. Metal plates and sculptural elements are transformed into resonant instruments, allowing matter itself to speak.
I see the collaboration as an act of bridging. I come from a ‘borderless’ space, an area that exists between margins. For 5 years, I have been based in The Hague, where I live and work from, a city of peace and justice, located on the western coast of Europe. Jack, on the other hand, is based in London, outside the EU margins. Together, our collaboration becomes an act of bridging senses, contexts, proximities, and topics, transcending geographical boundaries to create a vibrating dialogue.
The Interview with Stefania Bodnia was recorded by Anna Gaidai, October 2025.