Lesia Pcholka

Lesia Pcholka is a visual artist born in Belarus, currently living and working in Berlin, Germany and Bielsk Podlaski, Poland.

She is the founder and Director of the VEHA archive.

Pcholka’s practice brings together archival methods, collective memories, and historical continuities to explore how the past shapes contemporary life in Belarus and beyond. Through photography, video, and installation, she examines the tension between official narratives and undocumented histories, focusing on voices which are often silenced. Her work situates Belarus within a broader comparative frame, tracing parallels with other authoritarian contexts while also probing spaces of resistance. Exile sharpens her attention to displacement, belonging, and fragile memory, while gender perspectives inform her sensitivity to embodied experience and power.

By mobilising community archives and approaches in experimental storytelling, Pcholka creates layered narratives that move between personal and political, private and collective, re-imagining how histories can be remembered and resisted.

Pcholka was the ICORN resident in Gdańsk, 2021-2022.

You can learn more about Lesia Pcholka’s work on her website or by following her on Instagram.