Olesia Kryvolapova

My practice explores memory, identity, and emotional states through printmaking, with a particular focus on experiences of displacement, vulnerability, and the shifting meaning of “home.” Working primarily with intaglio processes, I combine soft ground etching, drypoint, and chine collé with experimental techniques such as collagraph and monoprint to construct layered and tactile images.

My recent work is rooted in personal experience, including my displacement from Ukraine and a period of hospitalization in 2025. These events have shaped my ongoing investigation into how physical and psychological conditions influence one’s sense of self and belonging. I am particularly interested in the relationship between internal emotional states and their external, bodily manifestations.

Through material processes such as etching, scratching, layering, and hand sewing, I translate fragile and often difficult experiences into a visual language. The physicality of printmaking — pressure, repetition, erosion, and transfer — becomes a conceptual tool, reflecting cycles of instability, endurance, and recovery. In my project Home, I explored childhood memory and the idea of home as something both physical and emotional, often shaped by loss and distance. My current work extends this research, considering the body itself as a temporary and unstable “home,” marked by illness and transformation. By combining traditional techniques with experimental approaches, I aim to create prints that are both materially sensitive and emotionally direct, inviting the viewer to engage with the complexity of lived experience.