Her art has captured the attention of fashion’s elite – Cara Delevingne recently commissioned a bespoke illustration for a leather jacket – and her delicate tattoo designs reside on the limbs of friends – among them musician Florence Welch, who traded her custom ink for a song. Upon first glance, the works of Melbourne-based artist Stanislava Pinchuk – who operates under the moniker, Miso – appear as delicate needlepoints dotted in seemingly random clusters. Look again and the dots begin to transform, tracing starry constellations or nuclear disaster zones. While Pinchuk’s art can be appreciated up close, a wider gaze allows the narrative to take form; slow and powerful and completely immersive.

“It’s just me. The work is all of me. And it’s pretty amazing having this visual language that I can pour all of myself into.”

Born in Ukraine in 1988, Miso is a nomad of sorts; she moved to Australia when she was 10 before living in Tokyo and now Melbourne. Her heritage helps fuel her ongoing interest in how conflict or disaster can change the ground you stand on. While a previous body of work focused on the war in Ukraine, Miso’s current exhibition, Fall Out, retraces data maps of the sites in the Fukishima Exclusion Zone on stark white paper. “It was everything I was thinking about, just lying on the ground for me ... textiles tracing the topography of the changed land, this idea of failed containment, fallout slipping through the holes.”

Her ethereal tattoos are given to a special few, exchanged for lessons, favours and personal gifts. The interactions act as a reprieve from the art she creates day-to-day, “... to just take the time to draw and talk all night, drink and eat cheese, fit and scale and re-draw and tattoo.”

“It’s such a nice contrast for me, to making really pristine, archival, immaculate white work. To get really messy, and do something permanent, full of adrenaline, really quickly.”