Artist Name: Oksana Zmiyevska
Residency Dates: July 2025
Born: 1987
Hometown: Armiansk, Crimea, Ukraine
Lives & Works: Vienna, Austria
URL: oksanazmiyevska.com | Instagram @oksana_zmiyevska
Gallery: Nicole Gnesa Gallery and Ernst Hilger Gallery
Education:
2011 – Master’s Degree in Painting, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Bio/Statement:
Oksana Zmiyevska’s body of work explores portraiture as a political and psychological genre. When it comes to self-portraits, Zmiyevska candidly exposes vulnerability and self-criticism, but also admiration and experience of self-intimacy. Partly painted from her private archive, sometimes referencing to the great masters, or just sketched in front of a mirror, she delves into the complexity of boredom and excitement of having this one particular body, this one particular face—the one you know the most, yet the one that still surprises you. In multi figure compositions, Zmiyevska develops imagery of intensity of being together. Whether it is a sensual moment between two, or a basketball match, or castellers, or gamblers in a casino, the artist always focuses on the event of nearness to the others and the ambiguity of it. Within her groups, love is mixed with violence, night parties with anxiety, childhood memories with fears—the drive of togetherness is underlaid with tension that shimmers through and questions the genuine gravity of it. The border between personal and political remains very fragile in Zmiyevska’s oeuvre. Faces and figures on her canvases manifest entanglements of life, and history, and passions that we have to navigate; and it is much more complicated than just to fight or to embrace. (Text by Liudmila Kirsanova)
Her solo exhibitions include: Heroes, Nicole Gnesa Galerie, Munich, Germany (2024); sometimes i don’t even know the reason why, Galerie Ernst Hilger Ballgasse, Vienna, Austria (2023); Leonardo, Galeria Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2022); Artist Statement, Parallel Vienna (2022); Die Flügel der Nasen bebten, Aa Collections, Vienna, Austria (2020). Oksana Zmiyevska has participated in group exhibitions such as WAS DENKEN SIE? Statements zu Migration und Menschenrechten, Atrium des Österreichischen Kulturforums, Rome, Italy (2025); UTOPIA DYSTOPIA, Parallel Vienna, Vienna (2024); Landscapes II Female Positions, Galerie Artecont (2024); Virtuelle Ausstellung: The Story of Us, Visionary Projects, New York (2023); Wild Thing – you make my heart sing, NOMZ Gallery, Vienna (2023); APOPHENIA, Penthouse DUMBO Brooklyn, New York (2022). Her works are part of numerous international collections, including the collection of the City of Vienna and the private collections of famous artists Amoako Boafo and Katherina Olschbaur, among others.
