ARTIST STATEMENT
Olga Matveeva is a visual artist working across photography, installation, artist’s books, and analogue printing processes.
Matveeva’s practice explores individual experience and strategies of adaptation within shifting socio-political contexts. Her work focuses on the relationship between humans and their environment, the thresholds between the individual and the collective, and the intersections of the real and the mythological. She approaches contemporary realities through mythology, mysticism, and conceptual metaphor, addressing both social and internal, psychological forms of conflict.
A key focus of her work lies in states of vulnerability, suspended forms, and latent potential, where body, space, and material engage in dynamic interplay. Photography, installation, and printmaking function as tools to capture these transitional moments, reflecting strategies of survival, adaptation, and transformation. Across her practice, the organic and artificial, the corporeal and metaphorical, converge to create hybrid environments in which conventional perceptual boundaries dissolve.
Matveeva’s projects foreground the dialogue between individual and collective perspectives, between bodily experience and metaphorical mediation of socio-cultural realities. Her objects, photographs, and artist’s books act as investigative instruments, probing the intersections of human presence, materiality, and historical context, offering alternative modes of perception and interpretation of contemporary life.
EDUCATION
2020
Irina Tarkhanova`s Bookbinding Laboratory
2017
Summer Academy in Salzburg, class of Michael Beutler
2016
Workshop by the magazine Der Greif
2012
Workshop by Hannes Wanderer “Turn Your Project Into
A Great Photo book”
2011
Workshop by Bas Vroege “From history in pictures
to multimedia presentation”, Paradox photography
2010-2013
Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia,
Moscow
2003-2008
State Academic University of Humanitarian Sciences,
Moscow
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025
- Anabiosis, Nordistca Gallery, Belgrade Photo Month
2024
- HEREAFTER, Artget gallery, Cultural Center of Belgrade
2023
- Visible Emptiness, Herceg Novi, Montenegro
2021
- Herbarium, Pennlab gallery, Moscow
2019
- Pro and Cons, Artplay SPb, Saint-Petersburg / Khodinka gallery, Moscow
- Reminiscence, Ostavinska gallery, Belgrade Photo Month
2018
- Supercover, Krasnodar, Russia
- Ostlook Exhibition, 7-th Triennale of photography, Gamburgh
- Connections, Kvaka22, Belgrade Photo Month
- Art Subject festival, Vladimir, Russia
2017
-Russian self-published photo books, the biennial of contemporary art, Tallinn
-Relapse of private. Photobook: Personal history as a time stamp, National Center for contemporary arts, Moscow, Russia
-New Spread, Photobookfest 2017, The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow, Russia
-Space, Littlefield, NY, USA
2016
-Rodchenko Art School.10 Years, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
-Photonic Moments, Evening projections, Ljubljana
-Intrusion, Kvaka 22, Belgrade
-Special edition. Photobook in Russia, Metenkov house, Ekaterinburg
-Antimuseum, Electromuseum, Moscow
2015
-The Photobook as an Art Object, Delhi
-Paths, Project room@NEXT, Vienna
-Young photographers, House of Scientists, Pushchino
-Silver Camera, Manege, Moscow
2014
-Heaven, Museum and Exhibition Center “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman”, Moscow
-Radar Moscow, HilgerNext Gallery, Vienna
-The Square of Freedom, Yermilov centre, Kharkov, Ukraine
2013
-Photobasis. Contemporary object photography, VMDPNI, Moscow
-5, HilgerNext Gallery, Vienna
-The happy end, MAMM, Moscow
-Silver Camera, Kazansky railway station, Moscow
2012
-I am who I am, Kunst Im Tunnel, Dusseldorf, Germany
2011
-Black Hole, Mykola House gallery, Kiev, Ukraine
-Crna Rupa, Cultural center of Zrenjanin, Zrenjanin, Serbia
2010
-Volga Biennale, Russian Museum of Photography, N. Novgorod
2009
-Russian Youth Festival of Photography, Russian Museum of Photography, N. Novgorod
-Silver camera, Manege, Moscow
AWARDS
2017
Photobookfest, Moscow, Shortlist
2014
Vienna Photobook Festival, 1st Prize
2011
Silver Camera, 2nd Prize
2010
Volga Biennale, 2nd Prize
CURATORIAL
2025
The Book Embodiment Laboratory, KC Radionica, Belgrade Photo Month
The Nature of Distorsion, UK Parobrod, Belgrade
2024
Tracing The Phoenix, UK Parobrod, Belgrade
Marta Ladokhina. Occasional Equilibrium, UK Parobrod, Belgrade Photo Month
2023
All I can bear, Rodchenko art school, Moscow, Russia
2022
Graduation' 22, Zaryadye, Russia
Seagulls sang to me here in a familiar language, Fairmont, Moscow, Russia
2021
2. Moscow Art Prize, Zaryadye, Moscow, Russia
Kos20mos21, Zaryadye, Moscow, Russia
2020
1.Moscow Art Prize, Zaryadye, Moscow
2019
Pro and Cons, Artplay SPb, Saint- Petersburg
Pro and Cons, Khodinka gallery, Moscow
Reminiscence, Ostavinska gallery, Belgrade Photo Month
2018
Connections, Kvaka 22, Belgrade Photo Month
2011
Crna Rupa, Cultural center of Zrenjanin, Serbia
PUBLIC SPEAKING / TEACHING
Since 2023
The master of the course “Methods of photo project presenting”, Photoplay, Moscow
Since 2022
The master of the Laboratory of photoprocesses, Rodchenko art school, Moscow
Since 2020
Co-founder and educator in the Book Embodiment Lab
Educator, master of “Contemporary photography and visual culture” workshop, Sreda x Rodchenko online
2018
Lecturer, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics
(Since 2018) Educator, Letovo School
Lecturer, ZIL Cultural center
2016
Lecturer, Yeltsin Centre, Ekaterinburg
2015
Educator, Electromuseum, Moscow
Since 2012
Educator, Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia, Moscow
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
HilgerNEXT Gallery, Vienna, Anzenberger Gallery, Vienna, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, private collections in Russia, Austria, Japan, Germany, France
ARTIST`S BOOKS
"Dead flies", self-published, 2020
ASMR, self-published, 2020
"Wind Zine", self-published, 2019
Anabiosis, self-published, 2018
Intrusion, self-published, 2017
NorthEast, self-published, 2015
Feud, Anzenberger edition, 2014
Home, self-published, 2013
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Forbes, British Journal of Photography, Snoecks, Eikon, Calvert Journal, Emaho magazine, FK magazine, GrantaOstLook,
“Russland”, Corso Verlag, Germany
To4ka-treff, Goethe Institut, Moscow
Chemodan, Japan
Culture Scapes Moscau, Christoph Merian Verlag