Ayla Olya Dmyterko (b. 1988) is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist currently based in the UK and working internationally. She was born on the lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda, as well as the homeland of the Métis Nation, Treaty 4, Saskatchewan.
Ayla's research-led practice reckons with the possession and dispossession of lands, objects, bodies and skies. Through total installation, she converses painting, assemblage, moving image, dance, textiles and texts; echoing the apophenic and porous nature of cultural memory. Taking form as a fragmented allegory, poetics of precarity and dissonance expose the psychological effects of utopian imaginaries and the realities of post-utopian presents. Her work sits at the intersection of ecological chaos and imperial-colonial ambitions, re-establishing a culture-nature synthesis through remedial response. Interested in how embodied practice can inform social responsibility and spirituality, she choreographs a score for her studio that confounds auto-theoretical impulse, imbued equally with articulations of the ritualistic, pre-patriarchal, tacit, vernacular and folkloric. This leads her work to disintegrate 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.
EDUCATION
• Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, US
• Master of Fine Art, Glasgow School of Art, UK
• Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting), Concordia University, Montréal, CA
• Bachelor of Education (Art & Dance), University of Regina, CA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 (upcoming: Nov 13, 2025 - Jan 21, 2026) Ring Around the Sun & We Rage On, Alma Pearl, London, UK
2023 Liberate Thee, Angel of History, Pangée, Montréal, CA
2022 Vyshyvani Kazky, Embroidered Stories, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, CA
2022 Solastalgic Inheritance, Goethe Institut, Glasgow, UK
2021 POUR THE FEAR: Solastalgic Synchronicities, Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow, UK
2016 The Story Began with a Beet (It Must End with the Devil), Pangée, Montréal, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026
• Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London, UK (forthcoming)
2025
• Slugtown, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (forthcoming)
• Fools for Truth, Pangée, Montréal, CA
• Viaggi / Journeys, A+B Gallery (Brescia, IT), Matèria, (Rome, IT), Pinksummer, (Genoa, IT), and z2o Sara Zanin (Rome, IT), hosted by Alma Pearl Gallery, London, UK
• The Golden Hour, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, US
2024
• Antigone Revisited, Hypha Studios, London, UK
• What We Mean to Say, Banff Centre, CA
• Soil Horizon, KIRKI Projects, Sifnos, GR
• Bitch Magic, Alma Pearl, London, UK
• The Seasons Reverse, 36 Washington St Studios, Glasgow, UK
• Скарбниця/Skarbnytsya, Glasgow & Edinburgh, UK
2022
• The Grass At Our Feet, VITRINE, Basel, CH
• Labour & Memory, ACT Arts Centre, Maple Ridge, CA
• Happy Tide Will Flood Again, 5 Florence Street, Glasgow, UK
• Artists for Ukraine, 16 Nicholson Street, Glasgow, UK
• Reverb, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, UK
2020
• Ritual & Lore, Art Gallery of Regina, CA
SCREENINGS & PERFORMANCE
2025
• Dislocated Visions, Pleasure Dome, Toronto, CA
• Unholy Inheritance curated by Xinema, Winnipeg Underground Film Fest, CA
• To Be in a Time of War, performance with Nadja Abt, 'The Garden Show,' Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, US
2024
• Over the Hill & Far Away, London Short Film Festival, ICA London, UK
• Collective Dreaming, Meno Avilys, Vilnius, LI
• Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, SODA, Manchester, UK
• Drawing From Calcareous Milk Teeth, aCinema Space, Milwaukee, US
2023
• On Volya: Filling in the Frescoes, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, UK
2022
• The Ties That Bind, Collective Dreaming, CCA Glasgow, UK
• Our Shape Apparently, Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, UK
• Sometimes Time, Mourning School, Stockholm, SE
2021
• Cowlick in a Devil’s Peak, CCA Glasgow, UK
• And the Land Breathes Back, aCinema, Milwaukee, US
2016
• The Candahar, performance with Rebecca Belmore, MacKenzie Art Gallery, CA
FELLOWSHIPS & RESIDENCIES
• Summer Artist in Residence, Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, CA
• Résidence Pangée, Montréal, CA
• Inshriach Bothy Residency, Cairngorm Forest, Scotland, UK
• Graduate Fellowship, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, UK
• Emma Lake Summer Residency, Saskatchewan, CA
PUBLISHED WRITING, FEATURES & REVIEWS
• (upcoming) Feature, Art Canada Institute, writ. Philip Dumbowsky, 2026
• In the Middle Distance, interview with Maegan Beck, Blackflash Magazine. 42 no.2, CA, 2025
• A Skowhegan Herbal, ed. Landon Newton, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, 2025
• Animist Approaches to Culture-Nature, Interview, Engage Scotland, 2024
• The Middle Distance & Your Blazing Tongue in Eternal Interstice, Leeds, UK
• History Repeats Itself writ. Agnieszka Matejko, Galleries West, CA, 2023
• In the Weeds, Interview with Veronika Ivanova, CKUT Montréal, CA & Vilnius Radio, LI, 2023
• Generational Return, interview w M. Valiulytė & J. Šilytė, Collective Dreaming, CCA Glasgow Annex, UK, 2023
• Ukraine on the Membrane, FORMA Editions, London, UK, 2023
• Interview w Caitlin Merrett King, Young Artists in Conversation, UK, 2022
• What is Read in the Wax writ. Sam Weselowski, ReIssue Magazine, Vancouver, CA, 2022
• Boym's Berlin in ‘The Future Of…,’ KAJET Journal, Bucharest, RO, 2022
• Ukrainian-Canadian artist brings folklore & history together, The Ridge, CA, 2022
• Solastalgic Synchronicities, Art Maze Mag Ed 26, New York, US, 2022
• & History Wails Beneath Us in Language Compendium, 2 Queens Gallery, Leicester, UK, 2022
• Northern Exposure, Art Canada Institute, Toronto, CA, 2022
• Tell a Tale to be Preserved writ Yuri Bilinsky, New Pathways, CA, 2022
• Pour the Fear, KUBA Paris, Bonn, DE, 2021
• Eternal Recurrence of Escapist Spectre in ‘Penrose Helix,’ London, UK, 2021
• Certainty and its Refractions writ. Dr. Ranjana Thapalyal, MAP Magazine, Glasgow, UK, 2020
• Our Ancestors Exist as a Reliquary of Whispers, KAJET Journal, Bucharest, RO, 2020
• Ritual & Lore, Exhibition Catalogue and Text writ Jess Richter, Art Gallery of Regina, CA , 2020
• Cultural Memories writ. Jera MacPherson, Galleries West, CA, 2020
• Distance of Sea, of Years in ‘Chains,’ CCA Glasgow & Kunsthochschule Mainz, DE, 2019
ARTIST TALKS & TEACHING
• Visiting Lecturer, Painting MA, Royal College of Art, London, UK
• Visiting Lecturer, BA Fine Art, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
• Lecturer, Academic English for Creative Disciplines, Glasgow School of Art, UK
• Autotheory & Cultural Memory Workshop, Ukrainian Residenz, Berlin, DE
• Artist Talk, SODA, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
• Panel led by Celeste Baracchi & Linda Stupart, Alma Pearl, London, UK
• Mentor, Axis Arts Graduate Programme, Wakefield, UK
• Artist Talk, Zalucky Contemporary and St. Volodymyr Institute, CA
• Arts Educator, Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, UK
• Arts Educator, RELI and Outreach, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, CA
• Guest Artist, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, CA
COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES
Ayla Dmyterko's artistic archive is held in the National Gallery of Canada Archives & Collections. Her work has been acquired by the Saskatchewan Arts Board Permanent Collection and is included in private collections in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Ayla would like to acknowledge the ongoing support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative Scotland & the Shevchenko Foundation.