Ayla Olya Dmyterko (b. 1988) is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist currently based in Glasgow, Scotland
Interweaving lived experience and generational histories, her work reckons with histories of possession and dispossession of lands, objects, bodies and skies. Echoing the fragmentary and porous nature of diasporic imagination, she is informed equally by articulations of the ritualistic, esoteric, pre-patriarchal, tacit, vernacular and folkloric, disintegrating canonical interpretations of art history and forms of artistic labour. Circling eternally recurring ways that images are used to inform desire and belief, she is interested in ways that artists become mediums.
She received her Bachelor of Education specializing in Visual Art & Dance from the University of Regina (2011), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montréal (2015), and a Master of Fine Arts from the Glasgow School of Art (2020), where she was the recipient of the Glasgow Sculpture Studios Fellowship.
Her works have been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including: Alma Pearl, London, UK (2024); ICA, London Short Film Festival, UK (2024); KIRKI Projects, Sifnos, GR (2024); David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2023); Meno Avilys, Vilnius, (2023); Pangée, Montréal, CA (2023); VITRINE Basel, CH (2022); Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, CA (2022); Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, UK (2022) & Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2021). Her works have been acquired by national & private collections including the Saskatchewan Arts Board.
Ayla would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative Scotland & the Shevchenko Foundation