Growing up in post-Soviet Kazakhstan during the volatile 1990s, Milada Kopeliovich learned early that reality could be both absurd and threatening. In her memory, childhood is not a soft-focus nostalgia but a visceral blur of fear, survival, and the surreal theatre of everyday life—gangs on the playground, fathers with pistols, and mothers clinging to beauty as a form of resistance. Today, based in Budapest and trained in monumental art, Kopeliovich channels these formative experiences into psychologically charged paintings where innocence teeters on the edge of chaos.
In this interview, she reflects on the strange gravity of “play,” the architecture of memory, and why discomfort can be the most honest emotion an artwork has to offer.
You often turn to the theme of childhood — sometimes playful and chaotic, other times unsettling and almost apocalyptic. What was your own childhood like, and how has it shaped your artistic voice?
From the moment I began forming memories—around six years old—most of my memories seem to be a flashes of strongest emotions. And, to be honest, they’re rarely happy ones.
I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in the mid-90s, which is considered to be one of the harshest periods in recent history. It certainly felt like that for my family. I remember local gangs claiming territories on the big football field where we flew makeshift kites made of used plastic bags. One time, a gang member approached us kids—I couldn’t have been older than eight—and calmly said, “Little fellows, you’d better go home. We’re gonna shoot.”
There was also the night my father woke suddenly, grabbed a gun (every dad had one back then—it was a time when brutal force was a common language), and ran out of the house yelling that someone had broken into his tiny video shop.
It was just life. Nobody made a scene.
My mother, an art historian, tried her best to bring some sense of beauty into our poverty. I think the uneasiness and chaos that often find their way into my work are simply natural byproducts of growing up in such an environment.
Now, as a parent myself, those themes resurface—only this time, I’m seeing them from the other side. I'm not only reflecting now but also asking myself what can I do to make my child’s life and psyche be more healthy?
In many of your works, “play” doesn’t feel lighthearted — it carries tension, even a sense of danger. What does the idea of “play” mean to you personally, and why do you use it as a recurring element in your artistic language?
When I was a kid, we mimicked adults, as most children do, as a part of a self made up game. A Barbie doll would play a tired mother, or a shopkeeper hardened by life. Ken - a drunken abusing father, a gangster, a thief or a beautiful men from a Brazilian soap opera. We’d get married and divorced, fall into comas, catch cheating spouses and pretend to be someone else. That was our environment—both outside our windows and on TV. There were no dedicated children’s channels back then. I remember watching violent news reports, followed by a Brazilian soap operas.
So for me, play was never frivolous. It was serious—structured, based on observed life.
To this day, I think I haven’t outgrown that stage. I’m still playing—only now I draw scenes on canvas.
Your paintings often feel like a frozen moment where the viewer is left uneasy. Do you intentionally seek out that discomfort, or is it a byproduct of something you experience internally?Why not both?
I’m drawn to contradictions—to moments where emotions aren’t clean or clear. When you don't have a straightforward answer, the unease lingers. There’s tension in stillness, and sometimes, freezing a moment can help to face the complexity we usually try to avoid.
The piece Notary stands out with its unusual format and title. What does it symbolize for you? Is there a personal story behind it?
In Notary, I tried to capture something I’ve seen repeated across nearly every post-Soviet, Russian-speaking town I’ve visited. The notary office is a kind of landmark—it’s always there, usually on the ground floor of a grey apartment block, sandwiched between a grocery and a pharmacy.
When I was a kid, there were three notary offices within a five-minute walk from our home, each with bold red-lettered signs. For a child, they were mysterious spaces—official, a little intimidating, and yet strangely ordinary. Life moved around them. People came and went without question.
The painting’s panoramic format was intentional—I wanted it to feel like a fragment of a larger story, something you could expand in your mind. I’m working on two more sketches in the same format: one is a typical school, and another a small local shop, in Germany it is called Spatie—a place you’d find in any neighborhood, open 24/7, selling everything from cigarettes to ice cream. Together, these works are like a map of remembered spaces—common, unglamorous, but bearing a deep connection with a feeling of home.
If you could ask yourself one question as an artist ten years ago, what would it be?
Honestly, I don’t think I would ask a question—I’d rather offer a warning. I’d tell my younger self about the structure of the art world outside the Art Academy, the rules no one teaches you there.
Back then, I had no idea how important it was to think about visibility and professional steps beforegraduation. I would’ve told myself to start building connections, applying for residencies, exhibiting—even as a student, before adult life came with its responsibilities.
It would’ve saved years of wandering in the dark, trying to surface. But maybe that wandering also made me stubborn enough to keep going.
You work boldly with themes like power, violence, and duality. Where does that courage come from? Or are you actually going where you're most afraid?
I don’t see it as courage, to be honest.
Even the loudest, most radical art rarely changes anything—at least not in the world outside the art world. Art still exists within a framework of consumption.
Sometimes I ask myself: Can an object that’s bought and sold really challenge power? Is a commodity capable of influencing anything politically?
When I answered that question for myself, I stopped worrying. I just started making work about what matters to me. Because if nothing changes anyway, I might at least be honest.
It’s tragic, really, that in some places the most innocent of all human activities—making art—can still be prosecuted.
Do you have rituals or inner states that help you enter your creative process? What does your “working space” look like — physically or emotionally?
Not really. That probably sounds boring, but after six years of art academy—painting every day, no weekends, no matter the state of your mind or body—you learn discipline. You learn that inspiration is not a prerequisite.
These days, with a little baby, working feels rather like a privilege. I just go to the easel whenever I am free and begin.
My studio right now is simply a spare room in our rented apartment, which I share with my husband, who works in IT. In the evenings, that space becomes our escape from parenting, a small room where we can briefly be ourselves again.
I do dream of a proper studio in the future—big enough for large canvases, where I can be messier and freer.
Which of your completed works feels closest to how you see or feel yourself right now?
I think it’s Notary. Lately, I’ve been feeling that quiet nostalgic pull toward home and “good old days”—missing my people, the language, everything I used to take for granted. The painting captures that. It’s rooted in the architecture of memory: the block houses, the signs, the strange formality of everyday places.
Thank you so much, Milada, for sharing your powerful insights and stories.
You can explore more of Milada’s work and follow her journey here.