Ayla Olya Dmyterko (b. 1988) is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist currently based in Glasgow, Scotland and working internationally. She was born on the lands of the nēhiyawak, Saulteaux, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota and the homeland of the Métis peoples, Treaty 4, Saskatchewan. The parallel psycho-geographical consequences of colonial projects upon her home landscape and that of her Ukrainian ancestors deeply informs her research.
Dmyterko's artworks reckon with the possession & dispossession of lands, objects, psyches & skies; derived from both lived & collective experience. Grounded in lineages of painting: from the fresco, to the icon, to the modern painting; her field expands at times to involve moving image, performance, material cultures & texts - echoing the noumenal nature of cultural memory. In remedial response, she embraces a culture-nature synthesis. To be communed with ecology is to trust in chaos - a continual reordering is what is needed to survive. Following off-modernist U-turns and detours, her works draw upon vestiges of freedom and elements of immanentism located in the natural world, psychedelia, animist ritual, the Ukrainian avant-garde, spiritual abstraction 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.
In 2026, Dmyterko looks forward to a residency with IATRUS in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria following a period of creation in solace at her mother's farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. 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 have been presented at Pangée, Montréal, CA (2025); Alma Pearl, London, UK (2025 & 2024); Hypha Studios, London, UK (2024); KIRKI Projects, Sifnos Island, GR (2024); and VITRINE, Basel, CH (2023). Her film On Volya: Filling in The Frescoes was screened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK as part of the London Short Film Festival 2024 and David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, UK in collaboration with the Dovzhenko Centre, Kyiv, UA (2023).
Ayla would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative Scotland & the Shevchenko Foundation.
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