01.11 - 30.12.2023
CURRENT ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
Picture: Olena Angelova
ALINA MATOCHKINA
Alina Matochkina, born 1988 in Starobilsk, Ukraine, is a film director, scriptwriter, and visual artist.
After completing a financial training, she moved to Kyjv in 2006 and studied Documentary Film Direction at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary University of Theater, Cinema, and Television. She has been working in the field of video production for ten years, shooting commercials, video clips and documentaries. In 2018, Matochkina won the "Best Social Advertisement" award at the Molodiya Festival. In 2022, she completed her first full-length documentary film "ADA" about the Ukrainian artists Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnichenko. In spring 2022, she fled from Kyiv to Kollnburg, where she was one of the first artists in residence at the SCHIESSLHAUS AiR. Alina is currently based in Berlin.
Picture: Alisa Mezhenska
OLENA VESELA
Olena Vesela born 1994 in Kyiv, Ukraine, is a video artist, documentary filmmaker, and collage creator.
Through a series of documentary films, Olena attempts to reveal the phenomenon of Ukrainian naivism at mosaic bus stops, its specificity and universal value. Ukrainian naivism is characterized by a strong national identity and a deep philosophical component hidden behind a layer of street dirt and hundreds of torn advertising posters. Her aims are to create an art product that reinterprets Soviet heritage through visual art, to demonstrate the value of small architectural forms, promoting interest in cultural heritage and involvement in the preservation and protection of monumental works of art, and to stimulate domestic and foreign tourism by presenting the phenomenon of mosaic art in Ukraine as a holistic layer of objects from different regions united in a single network.
Picture: Svitlana Gryp
SVITLANA GRYP
Svitlana Gryb, born 1988 in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, is an illustrator and upcycling-artist. She is co-founder of the art space LISOVA 3 in Irpin.
Svitlana began her creative career as a book and fashion illustrator. She graduated from Kyiv University of Technology and Design and collaborated with renowned brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, Bazaar, Elle and many local Ukrainian brands. Moreover, she is author of one of the first Ukrainian “Wimmelbooks”.
In 2017, together with the artist Serhiy Spizhovyi, she created the art collective LISOVA 3, which has become an iconic meeting place for the creative community of Irpin and Kyiv. Together, the artists began to explore upcycling in art, as an opportunity to create concepts and meanings with old, discarded materials. They make upcycled jewelry, home decor, wall art, and more. For the collective, "upcycling" means moving an item to its next cycle. In contrast to "recycling", this approach creates added value and brings the object into the future instead of reducing its quality. Currently, the artists are engaged in the collective art practices of mosaic and painting, involving other people in the co-creation of the art works. These practices are also upcycling, whereby the materials used to produce these works are secondary, e.g., old Soviet tiles, rolls of wallpaper or photophones disposed of by photo studios. In general, the art of the collective LISOVA 3 is a modernization of the cultural heritage of the past, inspired by the traditional decorative Ukrainian art and folk beliefs.
In Kollnburg, Svitlana researches old local artifacts to combine them with Ukrainian details she brought from home. She creates artworks in which she explores the feelings and self-identification of Ukrainian refugees, the processes of their assimilation and the combination of our nations’ cultural codes.