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!["Rosme"]( "\"Rosme\"")
infoROSME is a scenographic installation, influenced by the history of the building, which hosted the exhibition— namely the former Cēsis Educational Factory for people with impaired vision (Cēsu neredzīgo biedrības mācību un ražošanas uzņēmums 1952-1999). After exploring the archives of the factory, Vasiljeva was moved by the axis, that the factory had been forming in the lives of these people: being not only work environment, but first of all a vibrant social space with an active theatre troupe. Vasiljeva introduces the mental space of a Theatre— as the entry point to the installation. Scattered throughout the floor— props, found and created objects aggregate the residues of the building’s ancestry and together stage an environment that reveals a sad obsolescence.
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!["Rosme"]( "\"Rosme\"")
infofragment of installation
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![Glass Grief]( "Glass Grief")
infofragment of installation "Rosme"
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![Rosme]( "Rosme")
infoROSME is a scenographic installation, influenced by the history of the building, which hosted the exhibition— namely the former Cēsis Educational Factory for people with impaired vision (Cēsu neredzīgo biedrības mācību un ražošanas uzņēmums 1952-1999). After exploring the archives of the factory, Vasiljeva was moved by the axis, that the factory had been forming in the lives of these people: being not only work environment, but first of all a vibrant social space with an active theatre troupe. Vasiljeva introduces the mental space of a Theatre— as the entry point to the installation. Scattered throughout the floor— props, found and created objects aggregate the residues of the building’s ancestry and together stage an environment that reveals a sad obsolescence.
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![Method of Loci]( "Method of Loci")
infofragment of installation "Rosme"
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![Kiosk]( "Kiosk")
infofragment of installation "Rosme"
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![Centrifuge]( "Centrifuge")
infoCENTRIFUGE is scenography and a radio theatre play based on Gunārs Priede's "Centrifūga"
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![Centrifuge]( "Centrifuge")
infoCENTRIFUGE is scenography and a radio theatre play based on Gunārs Priede's "Centrifūga"
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![The Old Judge]( "The Old Judge")
infoinstallation view at Gianni Manhattan Gallery
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!["The Prompt"]( "\"The Prompt\"")
infoinstallation view at Gianni Manhattan Gallery
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!["Ah Ernesto!"]( "\"Ah Ernesto!\"")
infoinstallation view at Gianni Manhattan,"The Prompt" exhibition
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![Necessary Illusions]( "Necessary Illusions")
infoinstallation view
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![Necessary Illusions]( "Necessary Illusions")
infoinstallation view
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![Necessary Illusiions]( "Necessary Illusiions")
infoinstallation view
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![Necessary Illusions]( "Necessary Illusions")
infoThe installation at 427 Gallery, entitled “Laika Tips” (“Necessary Illusions”) reinterprets the physicality of the gallery space, formerly a small business storefront. The installation combines architectural interventions, sculpture, cultural residues and industrial remnants. “Laika Tips” articulates a sense of vacancy permeating the city, and gives it a tangible, forlorn presence. While the entire front space is staged as barely a décor, the incentive backstage hides more in its sleeve.
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![Long Farewells]( "Long Farewells")
infosolo exhibition at Pori Art Museum
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!["Pea Man"]( "\"Pea Man\"")
info -
!["Vollbauch"]( "\"Vollbauch\"")
info -
!["N'attendons pas M.Lapatine"]( "\"N'attendons pas M.Lapatine\"")
infoinstallation view - solo show at Galerie Antoine Levi
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![Haus der F.]( "Haus der F.")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["N'attendons pas M.Lapatine"]( "\"N'attendons pas M.Lapatine\"")
infoinstallation view- solo exhibition at Galerie Antoine Levi
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!['Haus der F."]( "'Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["N'attendons pas M.Lapatine"]( "\"N'attendons pas M.Lapatine\"")
infoinstallation view- solo exhibition at Galerie Antoine Levi
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!['Haus der F."]( "'Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["N'attendons pas M.Lapatine"]( "\"N'attendons pas M.Lapatine\"")
infoinstallation view- solo exhibition at Galerie Antoine Levi
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!["Haus der F."]( "\"Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["Haus der F."]( "\"Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["Haus der F."]( "\"Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["Haus der F."]( "\"Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["Haus der F."]( "\"Haus der F.\"")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
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!["Song and Love"]( "\"Song and Love\"")
infoinstallation view at Indipendenza Roma
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!["Song and Love"]( "\"Song and Love\"")
infoinstallation view at Indipendenza Roma
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![Je ne dors plus]( "Je ne dors plus")
infofilm
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!["Song And Love"]( "\"Song And Love\"")
infoinstallation view at Independenza Roma
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![Qualcuno si è seduto sulla mia sedia]( "Qualcuno si è seduto sulla mia sedia")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Quartz Torino
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![Qualcuno si è seduto sulla mia sedia]( "Qualcuno si è seduto sulla mia sedia")
infoInstallation view of the solo exhibition at Quartz Torino
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!["Song and Love"]( "\"Song and Love\"")
infoinstallation view at Indipendenza Roma
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!["Song and Love"]( "\"Song and Love\"")
infoinstallation view at Indipendenza Roma
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!["Gold Is The Metal with The Broadest Shoulders]( "\"Gold Is The Metal with The Broadest Shoulders")
infoinstallation view at Supportico Lopez
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!["Zefiro Torna"]( "\"Zefiro Torna\"")
infoinstallation view at Passerelle
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!["Decline of the Showpieces"]( "\"Decline of the Showpieces\"")
infoinstallation view
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!["Zefiro Torna"]( "\"Zefiro Torna\"")
infoinstallation view at Passerelle
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!["Decline of the Showpieces"]( "\"Decline of the Showpieces\"")
infoinstallation view
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!["You've got beautiful stairs you know"]( "\"You've got beautiful stairs you know\"")
infoinstallation view at Kunstverein München
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!["You've got beautiful stairs you know"]( "\"You've got beautiful stairs you know\"")
infoinstallation view at Kunstverein München
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!["You've got beautiful stairs you know"]( "\"You've got beautiful stairs you know\"")
infoinstallation view at Kunstverein München
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!["You've got beautiful stairs you know"]( "\"You've got beautiful stairs you know\"")
infoinstallation view at Kunstverein München
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!["The Limp Of A Letter"]( "\"The Limp Of A Letter\"")
infoinstallation view at Vleeshal Markt
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!["En rachâchant"]( "\"En rachâchant\"")
infoinstallation view at Vleeshal Markt
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![Piano Man]( "Piano Man")
infodetail of "Jargot" installation
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![Jargot]( "Jargot")
infoinstallation view- solo exhibition at Art In General
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![What Did You Expect, Mr.Milquetoast?]( "What Did You Expect, Mr.Milquetoast?")
infoinstallation view at Badischer Kunstverein
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![What Did You Expect, Mr.Milquetoast?]( "What Did You Expect, Mr.Milquetoast?")
infoinstallation view at Badischer Kunstverein
Collaboration
Websites
Artist's website
www.olavasiljeva.netSocial media
Member of Artists’ Initiative/Collective/Incubator
The Oceans Academy Of Arts (OAOA)
Member of a professional association/artists’ association
Platform BK
ADAGP
Curriculum vitae
Education
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2008 - 2009Fine Arts Amsterdam, Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten diploma
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2001 - 2005Fine Arts Utrecht, HKU faculteit Kunst en Vormgeving diploma
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1999 - 2000Fine Arts Croydon College
exhibitions
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2023
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2023My Eyes Like Shovels HUA International Berlin, Germany hua-international.com/exhibitions/35-my-eyes-like-shovels-curated-by-gigiotto-del-vecchio-featuring-the-works/ Group
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2022
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2021Laika Tips Necessary Illusions) 427 Gallery Riga, Latvia The installation at 427 Gallery, entitled “Laika Tips” (“Necessary Illusions”) reinterprets the physicality of the gallery space, formerly a small business storefront. The installation combines architectural interventions, sculpture, cultural residues and industrial remnants. “Laika Tips” articulates a sense of vacancy permeating the city, and gives it a tangible, forlorn presence. While the entire front space is staged as barely a décor, the incentive backstage hides more in its sleeve. artviewer.org/ola-vasiljeva-at-427/ Solo
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2020Long Farewells Pori Art Museum Pori , Finland "Long Farewells" engages with the Pori Art Museum primarily through its architectural ancestry. Formerly a weigh house, the building in the town port had a transitive, measuring, evaluating function. It was a threshold space, made for the passage of goods, for their transition via a temporary halt, display and estimation. As if subjected to a similar transition, Vasiljeva’s artworks are passersby in this liminal space. The exhibition, consisting of a multi-layered arrangement of artifacts, materials, and media, brings together works, old and new, and echoes the artist’s longstanding interest in the relationship between display and backstage — that is, the relationship between the displayed and the allegedly never displayed. olavasiljeva.net/long-farewells Solo
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2019‘Haus der F.’ Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld, Germany Relying on my affinity with the museum’s collection of applied arts, I was invited to engage and reflect on their Werkbund collection. The voluminous catalogue of the collection, which I received from the museum contained many hundreds of works and only three of them by the female designers. The great disparity between the male and female designers in the museum’s collection inspired me to carry out research on women in the Werkbund. Even though many female designers were part of the movement, their work was discredited and dreaded by the male colleagues, who regarded it as kitschy, amateurish and insufficiently objective. In order to counteract these prejudices, a group of women designers conceived the Haus der Frau for the 1914 German Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. It was organised by women designers and only works by women designers were presented with the intention of introducing the objective female designer. This aspect was also expressed in the strict reduced architecture of the venue that largely forwent the use of ornaments or anything that could suggest sentiment. Ironically, Haus der Frau was viewed by critics as a copy of male design and the creativity of the women designers was again denied and ridiculed. With hindsight, the project worked within the binary logic imposed by male chauvinism, and thus simply confirmed it. The pavilion was destroyed during the war and there was no mention of it in the historical literature until the late 80’s. This context served as the starting point for an installation that playfully tries to annul the boundaries of gender roles and authorship. Haus der F. is no longer a venue that encapsulates women but rather a space for the cooperation between designers whose gender is difficult to ascertain. The installation displays traces of an artist’s workshop, or rather the remnant interior of a showroom. If the ethos of Werkbund lays in rationalization, Haus der F. welcomes useless pursuits and intellectual wandering, shifting the one-truth models of reasoning and style advocated by rigid objectivity. Riddles, puzzles, theatre, errors, permutations, private references and jokes, risqué double entendre populate the interiors and disarm any binary opposition of styles. kunstmuseenkrefeld.de/en/Exhibitions/2019/Ola-Vasiljeva-Der-Werkbund-Haus-Der-F Solo
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2019‘N’attendons pas M. Lapatine’ Galerie Antoine Levi Paris, France N’attendons pas M. Lapatine invites the viewer to a deserted environment, echoing a semi-public space or a deteriorated passage. Private and intimate remains of a personal history are concealed yet exposed behind the gaping door of M. Lapatine’s locker. With suggestive traces of former vigor, phalllic symbolism transforms here into the frail bones of an architectural underbelly. In times when gentrification and displacement dominate the urban and social landscape, Vasiljeva’s installation, developed in situ, poetically embraces spatial aging, and reflects her ongoing interest in the ambivalent relationship between historical, social and natural temporalities. antoinelevi.fr/patina-ola-vasiljeva/ Solo
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2018Song And Love Indidpendeza Roma Rome, Italy Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Ola Vasiljeva exhibit for the first time together in Rome at Indipendenza Studio. Invited by Gigiotto Del Vecchio and Stefania Palumbo (Supportico Lopez), the artists conceived a project that intersects their individual production with the possibilities of a chorus of voices, a non declared collaboration, a natural codivision of the spaces. The exhibition Song and Love is an homage to the drawn, the documented, lived and imagined space of music, pleasure and memory. In a pivotal perspective towards both artists’ work is a shared relationship with staged space and sensuality. Seen through Ola’s work we approach a scenographic perception, where prompted narrative objects populating both institutional and domestic scenarios are distorted though layers of shifted materiality and touch. In the exhibition anthropomorphic erotic lamps illuminate sculptures which mirror intimately scaled bar room interiors. These structures are charged with overlapping narratives, performative traces, private references and immerse the viewer in an abandoned stage during an intermission, allowing them to rely on their own sense of direction. Matthew’s large format paintings function in the exhibition as theatrical panels, which are installed primarily on the ceilings of Indipendenza as displaced frescos, drawing the pictorial attention of the viewer upwards and paralleling Ola’s use of the floor as a stable support for many of her sculptures. Hanging on the walls through adjacent rooms are 12 ceramic masks by Matthew, depicting the months of the year. The faces are assembled out of thrown vessels which are squished, layered and flipped on top of one another. Both artists present a type of sensual portal bridging this world to the next in a scripted pattern of textures moving from room to room. indipendenzaroma.com/gallery/matthew-lutz-kinoy-and-ola-vasiljeva-songs-love-march-15/ Duo
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2018Qualcuno si è seduto sulla mia sedia Quartz Project Space Torino, Italy For the shows at Quartz Studio, Vasiljeva extends the imaginary territory of the next door tailor’s shop. The props and furnishings in the installation evince an alive disorderliness, as though they stood surrogates for the characters to whom their existence seemingly testifies. Activated by the interest in the foreboding and in the covert, the installation blurs the line between reality, imagination and simulation. Qualcuno si è seduto sulla mia sedia presents new sculptural and drawing works. www.quartzstudio.net/index.php/exhibitions/12-past-exhibitions/36-olavasiljeva Solo
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2017The Decline of the Showpieces Grazer Kunsteverein Graz, Austria Ola Vasiljeva’s work tells stories. Stories that belong to no single entity, but which unfold gently through objects. While walking one day in Graz, the artist encountered an enormous boarded-up 16th century building on Kaiser Franz Josef Kai. Falling in love with the door and window grates that shelter the interior from the glare of passersby, she began to develop new sculptural works that would neither hide nor reveal themselves – objects that ‘look like’, but refuse to fully commit, sitting somewhere on the cusp of recognition. Vasiljeva speaks with materials through strong lines, exaggerated features and rude shapes, but it’s the magic she conjures in encapsulating what’s absent that makes her work really sing. As part of our Winter Season the artist stages an arrangement of recent and newly produced work, to create a series of imaginary thresholds that act as guardians between one moment and the next. One of the artist’s works can also be seen in the window of the house whose encounter first inspired her assembly of objects for this exhibition. The work can be seen from the street, at 36 Kaiser Franz Josef Kai. Addressing the ideas of decline of the showpieces, Vasiljeva beautifully crafted a bed to nestle the personal library of Elisabeth Printschitz (1952-1993), former artistic director of Grazer Kunsteverein (1987-1993). The bed, which can be turned into a kiosk was gifted by the artist to GKV and will become a permanent part of our interior. Kate Strain www.grazerkunstverein.org/en/seasons/winter-2017.html Solo
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2017Zefiro Torna Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest, FR Brest, France “Zefiro Torna” borrows its title from a short sonnet by Francesco Petrarca, the sonnet depicts mythological references drowned in melancholia, defining in it contrast to the joy and light that arrive with the return of Spring. Vasiljeva creates a theatrical, scattered landscape, addressing the idea of community and its relation to the mythological thinking. The artist hints at the return of the imaginary community, supporting the idea that what is or what defies a society is not necessarily human. A community which involves tricksters, dead heroes, homeless lunatics, inherited spells, children's phantasies and lies, erotic alchemy, golden beards, film characters, mirrors, words. In other words a community which embraces the otherwordliness as opposed to the rigid committees or finger pointing categories. At Passerelle Vasiljeva creates is an abandoned stage set populated by paraphernalia belonging to these archaic characters. The strong scent of the spirit of the port city of Brest, its erotic querrell’ish sailor aesthetic sieves through the installation. The exhibition brings together various elements: half domestic-half imaginary objects, questionable materials, theatrical debris. These efforts result in a variety of sculptures made out of stainless steel, spray painted metal, textiles, rubber, ceramics, wood and other found or modified objects. Together they develop a refined, multilayered series of references that opens a dense network of associations. To accompany the exhibition Vasiljeva involves the educational department of Passerelle to participate and contribute to the installation. www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2017/08/ola-vasiljeva-at-centre-dart-contemporain-passerelle/ Solo
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2017Gold Is The Metal with The Broadest Shoulders Supportico Lopez Berlin, Germany "Gold Is The Metal with The Broadest Shoulders" www.supporticolopez.com/ola-vasiljeva-3/ Solo
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2017Dong with A Luminous Nose Galerie Fons Welters Amsterdam, Netherlands The Dong with the Luminous Nose borrows its title from a nonsense song by Edward Lear (1871). The song depicts the heartbroken Dong, who is left behind at a beach, longing for his ‘Jumbly Girl’. He designs a device to communicate his loss: “ the luminous nose”. Just as this nonsense rhyme, Vasiljeva touches up on subjects as grief, madness, eros, displacement and fragmentation. At the axis of the installation is a dark and musty architectural structure/furniture piece "Mr. Krop Is Not At Home". Here Vasiljeva refers to a prominent Dutch urban designer Hildo Krop (1884-1970), whose sculptural reliefs are integrated in the bridges and buildings in Amsterdam, not so far from the gallery. An echoed cabinet by H.Krop, being filled with traces of one's brief stay: clothes, personal items, a small domestic lamp; hints on a temporary shelter. The notion of temporality is echoed through other items: a giant paper trenchcoat on the floor, which seems to function as a fragile tent, an aged mattress stamped with private markings and ceramic objects resembling bunker ruins. Titles of other pieces within the installation, such as as "Hotel Bloedel", "Tempo House" and "Wrong Place, Right Time" all stemming from the songs of the British post-punk band The Fall and give away Vasiljeva's affinity with the spirit of salty rebellion. The Dong with the Luminous Nose is being accompanied with a custom made soundtrack by Vasiljeva, recorded on tape. In her installations Vasiljeva plays with the absence of hierarchy, the time space within her exhibitions is irrelevant; cartoonish, puzzled, absurd and burlesque characters are present, but resist leading the story through a linear narrative. The Dong with the Luminous Nose likewise introduces an environment filled with objects, scents and sounds as clues of overlapping narratives www.fonswelters.nl/exhibitions/the_dong_with_a_luminous_nose/about Solo
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2016You've got beautiful stairs you know Kunstverein München München, Germany "You've got beautiful stairs you know" www.kunstverein-muenchen.de/en/program/publications/2016/ola-vasiljeva Solo
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2015The Limp Of A Letter II Bozar Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels Brussels, Belgium “The Limp Of A Letter II” www.bozar.be/nl/activities/80577-ola-vasiljeva Solo
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2015En Rachâchant Vleeshal Markt, Middelburg The exhibition borrows its title from a short film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The film is based on a children’s story written by Marguerite Duras "Ah Ernesto!" It humorously looks into dehierarchizing the educational process by showing schoolboy Ernesto, who insistently and with unshakable conviction refuses to go to school, because the school teaches things he doesn’t know. The exhibition strategically approaches negation and refusal to learn. In the time when the market logic is instilled across all fields of teaching and dictates the dogmatic idea that knowledge must be rentable in economic terms, “En Rachâchant" voices a playful and absurd assault on the ideology of such education. The exhibition takes form of an anti-pedagogical stage, populated by mixed media, sculptures and drawings that manipulate motifs related to the subject of disobedience as a course of learning. As part of the exhibition, Vasiljeva has developed a course program: “ The Course in Lying ” and “The Course in Doubt” which will be exercised and adapted for the museum’s educational program during the exhibition. vleeshal.nl/nl/tentoonstellingen/ola-vasiljeva Solo
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2014
Sales/Works in collections
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2021Latvian National Art Museum Riga, Letland
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2017Centre national des arts plastiques Paris, France installation
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2016Frac des Pays de la Loire France installation
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2015Vleeshal/MuhKA Middelburg, nL, Nederland installation
Publications
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2024Ghost Town Monograph Vleeshal / Roma Publications Ola Vasiljeva Netherlands www.ideabooks.nl/9789464460513-ola-vasiljeva-ghost-town ‘Ghost Town’ is the first comprehensive overview of Ola Vasiljeva's practice between 2008 and 2023, and (re)collects the fragments, shapes, and thoughts that have been (re)configured and (re)presented throughout the artist’s multifaceted constellations. It consists of three intertwined sections: exhibitions, projects by the Oceans Academy of Arts (OAOA, an art collective Vasiljeva founded in 2008), and “storage”. The latter is a cross between an index, an archive, and a collection, and reproduces some of the separate elements which have featured in the Amsterdam-based artist’s projects over the years, from installations to sculptural works and drawings. Co-published with de Vleeshal, Middelburg.
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2016You've Got Beautiful Stairs Roma Publications, Kunstverein München monograph
reviews
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2019
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2018
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2018
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2018
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2018Indipendenza Roma Flash Art flash---art.it/2018/05/matthew-lutz-kinoy-e-ola-vasiljeva-indipendenza-roma/
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2017Gold is The Metal With The Broadest Shoulders Spike Magazine
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2016University Mousse Magazine/Jeniffer Teets
Awards and grants
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2023nomination Purvitis Art Prize
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2018Bewezen Talent mondriaan fonds
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2014Bewezen Talent mondriaan fonds
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2013finale Prix de Rome, Amsterdam
Representation
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--
Secondary art-related activities
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2018 - --Co-director of Page Not Found On-going