Olha Pryymak Ukrainian, b. 1979
"To keep a clear head from the grief over what’s going on in my birthplace, I look to plants. It’s always been about the plants, my family having worked on the land and practising herbalism. From about 2015, I have been using plants as a medium and main protagonists of the narratives in my paintings and performances."
–Olha Pryymak
Olha Pryymak’s work is driven by curiosity in plant-human relationships, using both oil paint and participatory performance as a tool to think through them. Painting allows for paying undivided attention to what is deemed important–the emotional flavour of lived experiences with the plants, or the way that the plants make you feel–savouring each brushstroke as a point of meditation on this interdependent relationship. These experiences usually stem from the performative side of Pryymak’s practice–staged encounters with plants in the form of participatory tea sessions–part Ukrainian peasant healer seance, part tea ceremony, rooted in her heritage of Ukrainian folk herbalism.
Olha Pryymak’s work has been shown across the UK at the National Portrait Gallery, Lewisham Arthouse, Arthouse1, Transition and Alice Herrick Gallery, as well as included in shows in the US, Italy and Japan.
