THE RED CARPET | SUBVERSUS

Subversus is a creative studio, artist collective and production house working across culture and commerce. We connect artistic practice and commercial opportunity, enabling work that’s ambitious and culturally sharp.

Founded by filmmakers, artists and cultural producers, Subversus was built from within these worlds. We understand commercial realities, their workflows, expectations and standards, because we work inside them every day.

Subversus acts as the bridge between artists and commercial partners, providing a support structure that protects the artist’s practice, serves the brief, and creates the conditions for shared authorship and collaboration. We make commercial production navigable for artists, and prioritise creative environments over traditional hierarchy. We work with artists who move across film, art, music, performance, fashion, installation, experiential and tech.

As a creative studio and production partner, we work alongside agencies, brands and cultural partners from concept through to delivery. Work is artist-led, brand-initiated, institutionally commissioned, or developed through independent practice and extended into commercial and public contexts.

Based in Sydney and operating globally, Subversus takes on unconventional briefs while honouring artist authorship and the ambitions of our partners.

We’re for agencies and brands seeking artist-led projects with cultural weight, for institutions exploring alternatives to traditional commissioning structures, and for artists whose work demands more room than a single category allows. Subversus is where artists and commercial partners meet on equal terms.

Subversus acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, create and collaborate. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and recognise the ongoing connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to land, culture and story. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and commit to working with care, respect and responsibility on this land.

Tanya Babić
Co-Founder / Executive Producer
tanya@subversus.com

Jason Sukadana
Co-Founder / Creative Director
jason@subversus.com

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SUBVERSUS STANISLAVA PINCHUK

THE RED CARPET

The Red Carpet is a documentation photograph of an architectural intervention and performance that transposes a Ukrainian Bessarabian rug onto the steps of the Sydney Opera House. In the work, the intervention functions as a symbolic red carpet for the building, foregrounding the often-unacknowledged labour of women’s domestic arts as a foundation upon which monumental architecture and architectural authorship is built.

Embedded within the rug’s ornamental patterning is a data-map of damage across Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, surveyed by the artist following the pro-democracy uprisings that preceded Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. By combining data visualisation with textile form, The Red Carpet situates itself within a broader lineage of women recording experiences of conflict through materials historically available to them - needle, loom, and thread transforming textile practice into an instrument of witness.

Photographed overnight earlier in the year, the work incorporates on-site track-mapping alongside set construction and post-production, and incidentally records the bushfire haze that marked Australia’s catastrophic summer. In dialogue with architect Jørn Utzon’s vision for the Opera House as a civic gathering place — a contemporary town square — the work positions the building as a site of protest and solidarity. The Red Carpet draws a line between the artist’s two homes, articulating a shared demand for humanitarian justice across geography and history.