Olga Hiiva

Lives and works in Accord, NY, USA

Artist statement

Artist Statement I paint on tablecloths, bedspreads and garments. The process by which I arrive at my paintings is like an archeological dig. Before I start painting, I look for patterns woven, embroidered, or sown long ago, and I let those patterns guide my work. I place a human figure or portrait into a large manmade or natural landscape. In my work, a tablecloth or bedspread plays as much of a role as a forest or a desert. In this balance of the concrete and ethereal, the viewer is encouraged to make space for inner meditation. The "Iconoportrait" series are inspired by my Ingrian-Finnish lineage. I draw my imagery and ideas from overlapping cultures and languages. I was born in the former Soviet Union into an Ingrian-Finnish and Russian-Jewish family. Ingrian Finns are indigenous to the St. Petersburg area, and were persecuted in Soviet Russia. The Ingrians in my family, my mother and her relatives, were evacuated to Finland by Germans during World War II. Most Finns were deceptively lured back to Soviet Russia, then imprisoned or sent to work camps. There were some 160,000 Ingrians in Russia before the war. Now, there are fewer than 20,000. The Ingrian genocide is on the cusp of being forgotten, but my mother’s story lives on in me and my work. I have spent the past three decades weaving threads of this generational trauma into my paintings—a history of arrests, deportations and killings that continued deep into the Soviet era. When so much felt desolate, and when...

Artwork