Polina Orlova
Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist working with textiles, installation, and material transformation — including salt, mirror surfaces, and drip-dyeing systems. In her practice, she explores the "architecture of tension" — moments where strict structure meets the unpredictability of the material and the process of decay.
Statement
My practice explores the tension between constructed structure and the independent will of the material. I create situations in which a work cannot remain static, allowing time, chemical processes, light, or physical stress to alter its form.
I often use applied materials and subject them to deliberate damage — bending, cutting, dissolving, or corroding — as a way to release unexpected qualities and generate new, unstable states. Through this process the object shifts from a fixed form to something closer to a condition or event.
The viewer encounters a sense of instability, as if the work could change or collapse at any moment. Social context appears only indirectly, reflected in systems of pressure, resistance, and adaptation that shape both materials and the structures surrounding us.
Solo Exhibitions
- 2025Tomorrow Has Already Happened, DDD Kunst House, Yerevan
- 2022Shape of a Human, Birzhevaya 12, St. Petersburg
- 2020The Depth of the Inner World, SKLAD 17 Gallery, St. Petersburg
- 2019System, SKLAD 17 Gallery, St. Petersburg
- 2016It's All – Not All, Wrong Bite Gallery, Simferopol
Awards & Grants
- 2015Special prize residence, Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation — Competition of Young Artists, New Projects for Anna Nova Gallery, St. Petersburg
Education
- 2019New Media Laboratory, New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg
- 2018School for Young Artists, PRO ARTE, St. Petersburg
- 2014–18Stieglitz Academy of Decorative Art, Artistic Textiles, St. Petersburg
- 2011–14National Academy of Arts and Architecture, Painting, Crimea
- 2006–10Crimean Art College by Samokish, Painting, Simferopol
Group Exhibitions
- 2026The Lost World, Rubezh × Helikon, Kocaeli, Turkey
- 2025Rubezh: Secret Revolution, Tbilisi
- 2025Utopia, Residency Ortachala / Object Community / Particles Here, Tbilisi
- 2025In Good Hands, The Gallery, Tbilisi
- 2025Hidden, Castello Art Residency, Umbria, Italy
- 2025New Locality, The Gallery (Artnomad curators), Tbilisi
- 2024Salt Room, Sister Room Space, Tbilisi
- 2023Anseong Art Prism, Anseong, South Korea
- 2021The Thirty-Year-Old Generation in Contemporary Russian Art, Marble Palace, St. Petersburg
- 2019Ordinary Things, DK Gromov, St. Petersburg
- 2019Impulse, Kuryokhin Center for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg
- 2019Levels, Stepan Razin Plant, St. Petersburg
- 2018St. Petersburg Biennale of Museum Design
- 2018Awakening, Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyiv
- 2015Point of Contact, Smirnov & Sorokin Foundation, Moscow
- 2014Drip Irrigation, abandoned cinema "Selena", Kolchugino
- 2013Crimean Painting, Union of Artists, Kyiv
Residencies
- 2026The Lost World Art Residency, Rubezh × Helikon, Kocaeli, Turkey
- 2025Castello Art Residency, Umbria, Italy
- 2025Sleepover Artist Residency, DDD Kunst House, Yerevan
- 2015Residency Program, Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation, Moscow
Fairs & Festivals
- 2025Soooon Space Market, Tbilisi
- 2020Blazarart Young Contemporary Art Fair, Museum of Moscow
- 2020Soundwalk, multichannel compositions, Vienna
- 2020Festival of Creepy Distance Interaction, Tallinn
- 2020Measure of Chaos, performance (Microbiome Orchestra), St. Petersburg
- 2019Acousmonium / Multichannel Music Festival, Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg
- 2018Seventh Independent Fair of Contemporary Art, Sevkabel Port, St. Petersburg
Publications
- 2022Russian Art in the New Millennium, Edward Lucie-Smith & Sergey Revyakin, UK. ISBN 978-1-913491-72-7
- 2021A. L. Stieglitz Academy, 145th Anniversary Edition, Russia. ISBN 978-5-6045458-3-6
- 2020The Generation of Thirty-Year-Olds in Modern Russian Art, A. Borovsky et al., Russia. ISBN 978-5-93332-696-0