Welcome to the Cutting (& Stitching) Edge, where we showcase people whose embroidered creativity is fresh and new!
Olga Lisowska is a mixed media artist from Ukraine.
“My work is a kind of documentary, illustrating the beauty of everyday life of a post-Soviet town in all of its forms. Daily monotonous life fades compared with products of media boom. The dictate of an ideal dominates entirely. So flawless, that only the miserable projection of it can exist in a real world. The beautiful pictures, which are, the more desired, the less authentic.
“When the internet is turned off, you face reality with all the squalid signboards, station junkfood, taking a bath in the pelvis, crowding in a public transport, spat sidewalks and so on. It’s a one big flaw. And it hurts. It’s a huge gap between “I want” and “I see”.
“But if you change a point of view, everything transforms. Any preposterous and dull event can be lead to an aesthetic maxim. You can create a universe with your desire to see and to notice something beautiful. The universe, where the every pissing on a flowerbed girl can be a metaphor, every crowd near the boozer can be a performance, every belyash* in a greasy plastic bag can be a diamond in a precious rim.”
* Belyash is a fried dough with ground beef or pork (or cat:)) inside. “
I really like Olga’s work. The kitschness of the work softens the darkness contained in her work. It echoes the conflict between the shiny version of the world that media portrays, and the sometimes stark reality that people experience.
Olga’s hand stitching provides depth and texture, while the touches of beadwork add sparkle to the gloom. It’s a visual metaphor and echoes the sentiment in her work, which is elegant and painful in equal measure.
You can see more of Olga’s work on her Behance profile as well as enjoying her other media work. She’s one talented individual!
