Olia Fedorova

Olia Fedorova is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist, working with photography, video, installation and text. Based in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her practice is focused on the exploration and interaction with environments as semantic spaces.The war caught Olia in Kharkiv and the artist decided to stay in the city, which is exposed to devastating shelling and missile strikes, to fight on the information and cultural front: to convey to the international audience the Ukrainian point of view on the war and share opportunities to help Ukrainians. “From the first day I started covering our life in the bomb shelter on my social networks, and suddenly got a great feedback. Thanks to my acquaintances in art circles around the world, famous media from Great Britain, USA, Canada, Poland and other countries began to contact me,” says Olia.In order to stay relatively safe, Olia had to move to the basement: “On the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion, we set up a basement in our house as a bomb shelter. There is electricity here, so we connected heaters and lighting. We brought blankets, sleeping pads and mattresses, and made something like furniture using junk. The first few days we were in the basement nearly around the clock, going upstairs just to use the bathroom. On the fourth day, we prepared Molotov cocktails and built fortifications all over our house, because the Russians broke into Kharkiv and there was a risk that they would hide in civilian buildings, so we were preparing to meet them.”Olia does not intend to leave the city at the moment. “I dream of staying in Kharkiv until the very victory. Then, together with my family and friends, we will start rebuilding our beautiful city,” she said.

Interviewed by Yevgeniya Tsatsenko