bio

OLGA KLIM /Klymenko/

BIOGRAPHY

Olga Klim is a Ukrainian interdisciplinary artist and visual dramaturg. Her creative method emerged at the intersection of large-scale scenography, conceptual collage, and stage direction.

For over 15 years, Olga served as a director for national events at Ukraine’s premier venues, including the National Palace of Arts "Ukraina" and the Ivan Franko National Theater. A significant milestone in her career was her collaboration with the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation, notably directing the gala evening for Bohdan Hawrylyshyn’s 90th anniversary and the Foundation's initiatives for the All-Ukrainian Human Responsibility Day.

Today, Olha is an active member of the international Paris Collage Collective. Her works have been featured in group exhibitions across Italy, Spain, Slovenia, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, and have been published in the French newspaper Libération.

For Olha, collage is not just a technique, but a method of reconstructing a world that has lost its integrity. At the heart of her practice lies the pursuit of a "third sense" — an emotional resonance born from the contrast of incompatible elements. The events of 2022 and her relocation to Poland marked a radical transformation in her practice. Today, Olha lives and works in Poland, focusing on the research of the Post-Zero state. Her experience in a new cultural space adds a dimension of "a person beyond borders" to her work, exploring an individual seeking firm ground in a disoriented world.

Education:

MIM-Kyiv Business School.
National Academy of Culture and Arts Management (Kyiv), Major: Stage Direction of Mass Events.
Kyiv Art School-Studio of Academic Drawing.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My creative method is a montage of fragile realities. It has evolved at the intersection of visual dramaturgy and conceptual collage. Over fifteen years of experience in stage direction have taught me to perceive space as a semantic field where every element functions as a protagonist. I view the canvas as a stage where a "still frame" has been captured: it is vital for me that the viewer senses the action that preceded the moment and the one that will inevitably follow.

I work with states of radical fragility and personal emotions at times when familiar foundations crumble and former meanings can no longer be contained within old forms. For me, collage is not just a technique, but a way of reconstructing the world. Through multi-layered compositions, I seek to expose the rifts between inner silence and external chaos, documenting how the human consciousness, under the pressure of change, assembles its own identity from the fragments of the past.

At the core of my practice lies the pursuit of a "third sense" — an emotional resonance born from the conflict and contrast of incompatible elements: archival photographs, classical paintings, fragments of memory, as well as the tactile textures of paper and paint. I engage with the past not out of nostalgia, but as construction material. My art is an attempt to prove that even in a space of total disintegration, the birth of a new, conscious integrity is possible. We ourselves are "living collages" made of cities, books, losses, and acquisitions, and it is up to us to decide what kind of reality we choose to assemble from the pieces remaining in our hands.