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- Artists' works
- Untitled, 2024
Olena Kurzel
The works reflect an inner conflict between the necessity to act and the desire to hide from reality during wartime, which deeply affects memory and perception.
Personal experiences lived through during the war become part of collective memory that transforms into new forms. The works contain reflections on forgetting in the context of war. They represent an attempt to understand and accept new conditions of life, transforming pain and loss into new forms of life and memory.
Olena Kurzel (b. 2000, Yuzhnoukrainsk, Ukraine) is a multidisciplinary artist working with painting, embroidery, sculpture, video, photography, and installation. Since 2025 she has been living and working in Prague, Czech Republic.
In her practice, she turns to images of landscapes and interiors inhabited by strange and fragile creatures. Her work focuses on the contemplation of nature and environments traumatized by war, as well as the textures of stones and branches, exploring how nature gradually reclaims urban spaces. In her projects, the artist constructs new places and beings that seem to heal the wounds of history.
Kurzel has participated in exhibitions at ZIEGEL Gallery (Graz), Ukrainian House (Kyiv), SPLAV (Kyiv), Zakarpattia Museum of Folk Architecture and Life (Uzhhorod), Asortymentna Kimnata (Ivano-Frankivsk), DIM Gallery (Warsaw), Office Ukraine & Kollektiv Zirkusgasse (Vienna), Open Space (Chemnitz), and Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv), among others.
