Olya TERESCHUK

Within her art practice Olya tries and explores nature in their most calm moments. Fog, lakes, rain, water in their different form is what catches her attention. What excites Olya the most in the subject is the feeling of complete serenity and calmness versus power and control at the same time. Through her work she tries and explores this very duality of nature and how it is connected to one’smental state. Olya uses embroidery widely in her practice. Just as it is in nature – rythm, cyclicality and regularity areneighbours to unpredictability, chance and unknown, embroidery in the paintings is used as an opposition to soft and loose paint washes. Water in her practice is often the main element and its soft flow usually dictates the development of the process. The compositions are based on landscapes familiar to the eyes, and they take the viewer to an imaginary world of shapes and reflections where they can relax and meditate. Recently, Olya’s focus and research are driven by her background. She was born and raised in Novosibirsk (Siberia, Russia) and twice in her life she has relocated to another country and another culture away from her family. The immigrant trauma, loss of connections, closed borders, disappearing memories of motherland and passed childhood, trauma of attachment in a context of relocation and current political landscape – all this is a subject of research in her practice. In the “The forest of unrooted trees” work series she identifies people with trees. Trees in this work are the symbol of clan, bloodline, roots, and a person’s attachment to a place. She is using threads, often broken, to refer to the cut connections and to raise the matter of its future effect on people’s lives.  Embroidery is a medium of the choice in her practice as traditionally it’s considered to be a feminine skill that was passed down the generations (in Olya’s family too). It allows her to work with canvas as with fabric (traditional way), unlike with just a flat surface when painting. These referrals to femininity are important in Olya’s work as women were and still are traditionally considered as a family keepers, responsible for building families, connections and bringing new life into the world.