A Secret Place Painting

Olya is a Russian-Hungarian artist who lives and works in Budapest. Born in Novosibirsk (Russia) in 1988 Olya spent her childhood years studying art in the city art school. As a kid she was noted as one of the most promising graduates of the city. However, pursuing artistic direction in the broken post-soviet state was seen as an unpractical career perspective. Therefore, she had chosen a specialty that is both: creative and could potentially provide for future, putting her artistic aspirations on hold. Five years later, in 2010, freshly graduated as a Designer from Novosibirsk State Academy, Olya joined one of the best IT companies in Russia where she had a fast career growing from a junior position to Production Manager of an International branch of the company in Dubai. However, childhood dreams about pursuing an art career had never disappeared and in 2017 Olya decided to break free from a corporate world and start her art journey. From the early days of her career Olya’s work was catching the attention of the international curators of online art platforms, private collectors, art advisory firms for hospitality projects and public spaces. This allowed Olya to study contemporary art at several workshops, experiment a lot and develop her unique artistic voice to become a full-time artist with a sustainable practice. Olya had number of group and solo exhibitions in Middle East and Europe, including several world known art fairs, her work is presented in many private collections across the globe. _________ Embroidery is Olya's dominant artistic tool because of it is expressive, graphical, and rhythmic and allows her to highlight the texture of the artwork, make it voluminous and -at the same time- it’s tactile and allows her to attempt to form and expose the metaphorical “memories” in her work, to manifest the essence of the memory and include an emotional component into it. For her it is a practice which allows to connect to the work on multiple levels. One of the materials which she uses constantly is a thread, which helps her to “connect the time” in her work: past and present and highlight the importance of social connections for our existence. The objects she creates through embroidery and fabric often take shape of an imaginary landscape, reflected in a water. They are a metaphor for our partly erased memories, reflected in our conciseness distorted over time with missing details.