Ayla Dmyterko's artworks reckon with the possession & dispossession of lands, objects, psyches & skies; derived from both lived and collective experience. In remedial response, she embraces a culture-nature synthesis. To be communed with ecology is to accept & trust in chaos - a continual re-ordering is what is needed to keep us all alive. Grounded in lineages of painting, her field expands at times to involve moving image, performance, material cultures & texts; echoing the noumenal nature of cultural memory. Following off-modernist U-turns & detours, her works reference psychedelia, animist ritual, the Ukrainian avant-garde, transcendentalist painting & the aura of archival objects. Circling eternally recurring ways that images are used to inform desire & belief, she is interested in the artist as medium.
Dmyterko is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist born in Saskatchewan, the lands of nēhiyawak, Saulteaux, Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. She is currently based in the UK and working internationally.
She recently attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, US and holds a BFA in Painting from Concordia University, Montréal and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art where she was awarded the Graduate Fellowship at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at Alma Pearl, London, UK (2025); Pangée, Montréal, CA (2023 & 2016); Zalucky, Toronto, CA (2022) and Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2021). Her films have been screened with Pleasure Dome, Toronto, CA (2025); ICA London as part of the London Short Film Festival, UK (2024); Meno Avilys, Vilnius, LI (2024); David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2023) and the CCA Glasgow, UK (2022 & 2021). Her work will be included in the 2026 Drawing Biennial at The Drawing Room, London, UK and has been presented in recent group exhibitions at Alma Pearl, London, UK (2025 & 2024); Pangée, Montréal, CA (2025); Hypha Studios, London, UK (2024); KIRKI Projects, Sifnos, GR (2024) and VITRINE, Basel, CH (2022). She has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts & Creativity, CA; Inshriach Bothy Project, Cairngorms, UK and the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, Saskatchewan, CA. She has spoken about her work in published interviews and artist talks at institutes including the Royal College of Art, London, UK; Glasgow School of Art, UK and Yampil Museum of Fine Art, UA.
Ayla would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative Scotland & the Shevchenko Foundation.
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