I reflected on how soil and plants can sometimes be the only witnesses
Working at the intersection of pictorial art, videos, and installations, Olga explores the topics of time, memories, and how they can go wrong. Her artistic practice includes collection and manuscripting of the stories about Soviet and Eastern European women that can’t be found in real historic references. The artist makes exploration tours to discover any information about families from the ex Soviet countries, aiming to chase away the official government-centered narratives. In her practice, Olga seeks from archived materials, uses natural pigments, and experiments with cameraless photography to create multipart works of art. She specifically focuses on the correlation between humans, soil, and nature, while studying how the traumatic past is reprocessed. In the artist’s works, soil becomes a symbol of memories, a true chronicle where history intertwines with personal emotions. Grotova’s exploration is unified by a single conceptual narrative, in which physical interaction with her materials reflects integration of personal and collective experience, pondering on the relations with the past, and recovery of the lost connections.
The artist took part in international residencies (Centre Recollects, Syllabus VI, and Praksis) and won Space Artist Award (2021) along with DYCP Award (2021). Her solo exhibitions were held in London, Birmingham, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Moscow. Grotova’s works can be found in the collections of museums and institutions in the UK (The Roberts Institute of Art), France, and the USA (Kadist), China (Schoeni Projects), and Russia (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art).