Ayla Dmyterko is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her artworks reckon with the possession & dispossession of lands, objects, psyches & skies; derived from both lived & collective experience. In remedial response, she embraces a culture-nature synthesis. Grounded in lineages of painting, her field expands at times to involve total installation, moving image, performance, material cultures & texts - echoing the noumenal nature of cultural memory. Her works function as animist rituals referencing psychedelia, the Ukrainian Avant-Garde, transcendentalist painting, and the aura of archival objects. Circling eternally recurring ways that images are used to inform desire and dreams, she is interested in the artist as medium.
She was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, Treaty 4 territory, the traditional lands of the nêhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Nakoda, Lakota, and the homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation. She received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art, UK; BFA (Painting) from Concordia University, Montréal, CA; BEd (Visual Arts & Dance), University of Regina, CA and has been a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, US; the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, CA and forthcoming at IATRUS, Veliko Tarnovo, BG.
Recent solo exhibitions include Ring Around the Sun & We Rage On, Alma Pearl, London, UK (2025); Liberate Thee, Angel of History, Pangée, Montréal, CA (2023); Vyshyvani Kazky, Embroidered Stories, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, CA (2022); and The Story Began With a Beet (It Must End With The Devil), Pangée, Montréal, CA (2015). Selected group exhibitions include Fools for Truth, Pangée, Montréal, Canada (2025); Viaggi / Journeys, Alma Pearl, London (2025); Antigone Revisited, curated by Marcelle Joseph, Hypha Studios, London (2024); What We Mean to Say, Banff Centre, Canada (2024); Soil Horizon, KIRKI Projects, Sifnos Island, Greece (2024); Bitch Magic, Alma Pearl, London (2024); and The Grass at Our Feet, VITRINE, Basel, Switzerland. Her film On Volya: Filling in The Frescoes (2023) was screened at David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, UK and at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK as part of the London Short Film Festival.
Dmyterko's artwork is represented by Alma Pearl, London, UK.
Ayla would like to acknowledge the sustained support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative Scotland & the Shevchenko Foundation.
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