"Olesya Gonserovskaya (b. 1987, Leningrad) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of ecology, psychology and anthropology. These themes unfold in multi-layered projects that bring together traditional and contemporary media. Her visual language is shaped through media installations, video, performance, drawing, and sculpture. She also incorporates sewing and assemblage into her object-based works. She creates a space for choice and individual experience, aiming to preserve an open artistic form — one without a fixed trajectory or a set of ready-made interpretations.

 

Gonserovskaya is interested in how cultural codes, symbols and traditions can be reassembled and perceived anew. Her approach is based on revisiting outdated images and phenomena to the present, questioning their relevance today. This strategy is evident in works such as Alphabet (2022), where everyday sayings become metaphors; Peace Signal (2024), where a peace message is translated into Braille and becomes part of a performance involving a mirror; and alive/not\alive (2020 – 2021), in which ecology-themed objects blend into the space of a modernist library, subtly provoking response and testing how alive and mobile patterns of behaviour remain in a familiar public environment.

 

In the practice, Gonserovskaya works with materials that behave as autonomous participants. She is drawn to ink, plants, compost, solar energy — substances that possess their own life, are open to collaboration, and capable of resistance. This choice of what might be called “sensitive matter” reflects her interest in relationships based on equality and mutual value — even if these relationships involve nothing more than interacting with material. This grassroots material democracy persists on the level of meaning, characterised by an interest in usefulness as a form of social care.

 

As the artist puts it: “Usefulness, to me, is doing what needs to be done — what no one else will do. It’s something like humanitarian work, but expressed visually. It can be about normalizing something, mocking what’s harmful, outdated, or obsolete — and supporting something else. Or about starting a conversation that matters.”

 

While addressing serious themes, Gonserovskaya’s multi-layered projects encourage the viewer to maintain a sense of humour and look at phenomena and objects from unexpected angles. And perhaps most importantly, they allow life to simply happen — without forecasts or expectations, shifting the focus from how things should be to how things feel."