Les Nouveaux Riches Magazin

ENG 6. September 2023

Interview. Olga Shcheblykina

She values spontaneity in her practice and uses art as a means of self-expression. Shcheblykina has been represented as a collaborative artist by Room of Fine Arts in Graz, Galerie Rudolf Leeb in Vienna, and Brunnhofer Gallery in Linz. Her works are included in the Lentos Museum of Arts collection as of 2023.

What is your background? Can you share a bit about your artistic journey?
My background is in graphic design and illustration, which I pursued for my first degree. However, I was a terrible designer who never saw the differences between typefaces and worked well with grids. Following graduation, I took a detour from design into freelance illustration, along with doing many other jobs. I even founded a sports startup and secured funding. In 2019, I burned out and quit the company. During the pandemic, I lived with my grandma in a small town in Ukraine and painted daily. At that moment, it catalyzed personal transformation. My language emerged organically from the profoundly intimate recesses of my being. The narrative threads frequently explore concepts surrounding women, the human form, and the intricate movement between aggression and vulnerability.

How do these themes manifest in your paintings and sculptures?
These themes emerge within my artwork through subconscious allure characterized by striking yet slightly unsettling beauty—a deliberate stylistic choice. I tend to create an undercurrent of distress, providing a glimpse into the enigmatic interplay of emotions. It’s not a direct pain, but some sight of it. It’s always an exploration of my internal landscape and the external reality that envelops me.

Could you describe your creative process?
My creative process is just living a life with a high degree of immersion in oneself and the surrounding reality. I feel intensely, work a lot, and art turns out. Much of what I make is from that dimension of my existence that I am afraid to look into, but it is always such an unbearable beauty.

Describe the feeling when you look at a finished picture of yourself.
Usually, I feel liberated from the possession of my thoughts and feelings. I feel freedom.

What are you scared of?
I’m scared of death, of course. That’s why I paint. In a sense, my art becomes a conduit through which I seek to engage with the idea of immortality while simultaneously confronting the inevitability of human transience while striving to do so in a way that offers solace rather than harm.