CV
Olesya Gonserovskaya, interdisciplinary artist
Educated in Rodchenko Art School, Media arts (Moscow, 2022), Pro Arte Institute for Young Artists (2018), and St.Petersburg State Academy of Industrial Arts, Department of Monumental Arts (2015)
Member of de_colonialanguage art group
Artis Statement
Olesya Gonserovskaya (b. 1987, Leningrad) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of ecology, psychology and anthropology. These themes unfold in multi-layered projects that bring together traditional and contemporary media. Her visual language is shaped through media installations, video, performance, drawing, and sculpture. She also incorporates sewing and assemblage into her object-based works. She creates a space for choice and individual experience, aiming to preserve an open artistic form — without a fixed trajectory, without a set of ready-made interpretations.
Gonserovskaya is interested in how cultural codes, symbols and traditions can be reassembled and perceived anew. Her approach is based on returning outdated images and phenomena to the present, questioning their potential relevance today. This strategy is evident in works such as Alphabet (2022), where everyday sayings become metaphors; Peace Signal (2024), where a peace message is translated into Braille and becomes part of a performance involving a mirror; and alive/not\alive (2020–2021), in which ecology-themed objects blend into the space of a modernist library, subtly provoking response and testing how alive and mobile patterns of behavior remain in a familiar public environment.
In the practice, Gonserovskaya works with materials that behave as autonomous participants. She is drawn to ink, plants, compost, solar energy — substances that possess their own life, are open to collaboration, and capable of resistance. This choice of what might be called “sensitive matter” reflects her interest in relationships based on equality and mutual value — even if these relationships involve nothing more than interacting with material. This grassroots material democracy continues on the level of meaning: an interest in usefulness as a form of social care.
As the artist puts it: “Usefulness, to me, is doing what needs to be done — what no one else will do. It’s something like humanitarian work, but expressed visually. It can be about normalizing something, mocking what’s harmful, outdated, or obsolete — and supporting something else. Or about starting a conversation that matters.”
While addressing serious themes, Gonserovskaya’s multi-layered projects encourage the viewer to maintain a sense of humor and look at phenomena and objects from unexpected angles. And perhaps most importantly, they allow life to simply happen – without forecasts or expectations, shifting the focus from how things should be to how things feel.
Selected solo shows: ▶ Root Directory, :DDD Kunst House, Yerevan, Armenia, 2025 ▶ me[RROR], Alexander gallery, Rose, Montenegro, 2025 ▶ The Teardrop of the Last Fossil Creature, Ria Keburia Residency, 2023 - 2024 ▶ alive/not\alive, curated by L. Griasnova, Aalto Library, Vyborg, 2021 - 2022 ▶ Non-selectio, cultural center Nevsky 20, St.Petersburg, 2018 ▶ …all should be malapropos, A. Akhmatova museum, St.Petersburg, 2017 ▶ Censorship, Most gallery, St. Petersburg, 2020 ▶ Kalechina, Pereletny Kabak gallery, Moscow, 2020 ▶ The Garbage Museaum, Colomna, 2019
Selected group exhibitions: ✴ Take a Seat, de_colonialanguage + independent curator Irina Denkmann, Frankfurt→Germany, 2025 ✴ Signal, Haus der Statistik, Berlin, 2024 ✴ Rubezh, IV International Instant Exhibition of Émigré Art, Tbilisi→Sakartvelo[Georgia], 2024 ✴ Graphic Arts Exhibition, Flash Art Gallery, Tallinn→Estonia, 2024 ✴ Represije. Torture. Rat. Rusija, Halle→Germany; Belgrade→Serbia, 2023 ✴ To Be a Plant, New Delhi→India, 2023 ✴ The Sphere, CICA Museum, South Korea, 2023 ✴ The Myths, Izmailovo gallery, Moscow, 2022 ✴ Superseded Action, ZTI gallery, Moscow, 2022 ✴ The Images of the Future, Krasnokholmskaya gallery, Moscow, 2022 ✴ Pure media art, Fabrika ZTI gallery, Moscow, 2021 ✴ With the care about you, Ekaterinburg, 2020 ✴ New Anthropology, museum of S. Pavlov, 2019 ✴ Levels, Stepan Razin Factory, 2019 ✴ Save and Protect, General Stuff Building, Hermitage, 2018 ✴ Silent Voices, museum in St. Peter and Paul castle, 2017
Selected interventions: ◆ Magenta Word, video intervention in the city, the SOOMA gallery, Tbilisi→Sakartvelo [Georgia], 2025 ◆ The Pravda Grave, [Facade Communism]exhibition in the Alexanderplatz Museum, together with de_colonialanguage and Georgio Alani, 2024 ◆ Series of artistic interventions on the Alexanderplatz, Berlin, 2024 - 2024 ◆ PLAN_T, Urban Camp [CISR Berlin] in Tskhaltubo, 2024 ◆ the Little Dutch Masters, Artpunctuation festival, St. Petersburg, 2017
Residencies: ✴ Sleepover Artist Residency, Yerevan, Armenia, 2025 ✴ gallery Alexander residency, Rose, Montenegro, 2025 ✴ Urban Camp [CISR Berlin], Tskhaltubo, Sakartvelo [Georgia], 2024 ✴ Ria Keburia Art Residency, Tbilisi, Sakartvelo [Georgia], 2023 - 2024 ✴ Artkommunalka, Colomna, Russia, 2019
Awards and contests: • Communicative Arts, winner, 2024 • Braw Amazing Book Shelf for Out of the Nest book, 2023 • iJungle illustration contest, Silver medal, 2022 • The Book Image, 2018, 2020 • Bevilacqua Prize, Venice, 2017, short-listed • Orientirs, St.Petersburg, 2014, 1st prize
Collections: • collection of Anna Akhmatova Museum • collection of CICA, modern art museum, South Korea • private collections in the USA, Ukraine, Sakartvelo [Georgia], Russia, France, Finland, Montenegro • works partly represented by Evdokimov Gallery
Publications: • Suboart Magazine Nr. 34, 2024 • Berliner Gazette, A Guide to Deconstructing and Resisting the Hijacking of Decolonial, Saltanat Shoshanova, Marina Solntseva, 2024 • Divide Magazine, Issue 4 [addition], Issue 8, 2023 • The Starving Artist, The Body Remembers, 2023 • The ROAR magazine #7, #9, #13, 2023 - 2024
Galleries: • Flashart Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia • A2 Gallery, Potsdam, Germany