Interview
Olga Goldina Hirsch
Olga Goldina Hirsch is an artist with her own complex symbolic universe. Her artworks testify to an internal journey towards recovering the obliterated memories. She addresses what she refers to as the “failing memory” of the witnesses to tragic events, including the members of her family who suffered during Stalin’s repressions. These failing memories are represented as empty spaces: the gaps in time, the memory blackouts, events erased from history – all appearing as voids in the compositional structure. In her current paintings, Olga moves from representation of these voids towards the airy, light, vibrant, inspirational, open spaces, replete in meanings. By exploring her works, one can trace the trajectory of her inner artistic and personal evolution. The artist works in mixed media. She believes that combinations of media may correspond to her layered messages as well as to subtle movements of a human psyche. Her artworks are like palimpsests, and each viewer may focus on a specific layer. Olga’s works can be found in the Copelouzos Family Art Museum, Athens; in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vladivostok and in private collections across the UK, France, Italy, Canada and the USA.
In 2022, she became winner of the runner-up prise of the TEBBS International Art Award and was listed as member of the Taylor Foundation, Paris. In 2021, a work from Olga’s series “Who Am I?” was featured in the acclaimed catalogue of Le Salon des Artistes Françaises. In summer 2023, her paintings were displayed on the iconic Times Square screens in Broadway Plaza, New York. They appeared there again on 31 December 2023 and will feature in June 2024. The posters with her works are showcased at the London Pimlico tube station, as part of the critically acclaimed “Art Below” public program.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“Perhaps, yes. I grew up in the family with strong artistic leanings and traditions. My grandfather was a futurist writer, a friend of the Burliuk brothers, and a journalist who became famous for his experimental novel trilogy “The Yellow Devil” and for his documentary reportage “My Chinese Diaries,” written in the early 1920’s. Both made him famous.
My grandmother worked as assistant in the architectural bureaus of Moisei Ginzburg and the Vesnin Brothers, the founding fathers of Russian Constructivism. She also met with Le Corbusier in 1928, and I still remember her stories.
The relatives on my father’s side were surgeons, performing pianists, composers, and musicologists. I also studied music from childhood into adolescence, as I considered becoming a music historian as a prospective career. My grandfather, who was a professional surgeon, had also tried his hand as an amateur artist in the days of his youth: he even designed movie posters to supply his meagre student income!
Although art, music and literature were part of my home upbringing, I eventually decided to become a scientist. On completing my secondary school education, I applied to a medical school and began to study science, which is also a creative discipline, if approached properly. I obtained my PhD in Biology and worked in the science laboratory for a while. In the 1990s, I started my own medical business and worked on the new generation of blood substitutes.
However, everything changed when I moved to the UK in 2011. That was the time when art beckoned and my childhood dream became a reality. My studies at City & Guilds of London Art School and my obtaining of an MA in Fine Art became a watershed in my life, that marked the transition from amateur to professional artist and was the beginning of my artistic career. I still consider my MA in Fine Art my major achievement.”
What inspires you?
“I am inspired by the beauty of nature, travels, meeting with my friends and strangers. For instance, my whole project about Anna Pavlova in London grew out of a chance encounter with one of the keepers of the Golders Green Cemetery where the great ballerina had been buried. We still keep in touch, by the way.
Quality art also inspires me by stirring my soul, provoking responses, appealing to my emotions and memories. When one sees a good artwork, one feels the impulse to respond to it and to emulate it. ”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“Well, themes are rather secondary to my work. When starting a canvas, I do not proceed from a theme, but from an emotional impulse, a certain state. I attempt to capture and convey my emotional and intellectual states, be this anxiety, joy, peace or fear. And then, a theme, or a major motif may crystallize in the process of working.
And this is exactly how my recent cycle, “The Pilgrims,” came about. I first started musing on my own destiny, my goal and my origins, and this is how this theme of pilgrimage emerged in my mind. I can link a certain theme to my artworks but not the other way round. The theme, an intellectual subject, is never a starting point in my creative process.
Talking about my art in general, I could probably say that I work with “the failing memory,” i.e. suppressed or obliterated memories of historical and personal events, mostly traumatic. At a certain stage, such blocked or obliterated memories become the guarantee of survival for a whole family or a whole nation. However, suppression of memories always has consequences. Ousting painful traumatic events leads to their recurrence in personal life and national history, until we heal them. I started doing so by exploring my own family’s history, which meant recovering lost documents and archival photos, filling the gaps with relevant information and recovering lives and erased memories from oblivion.
This process also found its expression in my artistic practice. I started by delving into my own “black square,” i.e. from reclaiming the fragments of the long-forgotten memories out of the “black holes” of oblivion. As everything I could find about the past was so fragmented, my first works came out as collages, consisting of old maps, photos, family drawings, soundscapes, poetry and recovered documents. The areas of oblivion were also represented by blank spaces and areas of white colour. With the time, I became aware that the compositional void is not entirely blank but is replete with information and messages. Therefore, my choice of colours was and still is dictated by my emotions, memories, and dreams. White stands for the space replete with information that must be recovered or re-accessed. A combination of metallic and fluorescent paints captures the flashback-like moments in time, the sudden outbursts of memories or insights related to past events.
However, this is no longer what I am seeking to explore. My initial interest in building on contrast, in clashing contrasting states, images, and experiences, has transformed into a quest for the variety of colours. I am moving away from monochrome to polychrome compositions. ”
“When one sees a good artwork, one feels the impulse to respond to it and to emulate it.”
How would you describe your work?
“My artworks are a journey, a labyrinth of memories and associations. My paintings are the windows that open into that secret cosmic space, where my spirit soars freely among the memories, vague intuitions, associations, voices, echoes, fragments of images, music, poetry and inner states. My paintings are the matrices of my soul.
In addition, each painting that I produce, is accompanied by a poem or a short story. ”
Which artists influence you most?
“If we talk about artists, I have always been inspired by the oeuvre of Ilya Kabakov and Anselm Kiefer. Both are bold, powerful contemporary masters who draw audiences into their own artistic universe. They invite the viewers to share in their intellectual explorations and poetic mythmaking.
If we talk about women artists, then these would be the so-called “Amazon of the Russian Avant-Garde” Natalia Goncharova and the American artist Lee Krasner, wife of the Abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. Talking about Goncharova, she is the embodiment my ideal of a woman artist. She would work non-stop in her studio during winters, while in summer she would travel, amass impressions, do a lot of sketches. I would love to live like that, but unfortunately, it does not seem to be realistic for me at this stage, as I currently have many obligations. I need to travel to several countries and look after friends and family living there.
What I would really find inspiring at this stage, is a big, spacious studio, where no one would distract me from painting, where I could be working on five to ten canvases at a time, like Damien Hirst does. This would be ideal! ”
What is your creative process like?
“Spontaneous.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I perceive artists as keepers of cultural memories, as intermediaries that speak of the past and of the future. Certain artists possess the ability to connect with and interrogate the collective unconscious of certain groups, whole nations and even cultures, depending on the scope of their intellectual and creative ability.”
What is your definition of artistic success?
“Success is necessary for an artist, but each artist has a different definition of success. To me, it consists in the ability to find one’s own audience that resonates with the ideas and states, expressed in one’s artworks. It also consists in finding the group of people who relate to the artist’s works, appreciate, and understand them. If the artist is also encouraged and supported by galleries and art professionals, then they are truly successful.
Having success also means being accepted among one’s fellow artists and becoming part of the local and international artistic community. Such acceptance and appreciation may result in invitations to participate in various exhibitions and cultural initiatives.
When one is overlooked and unnoticed, it is a certain tragedy, a deadlock in one’s career, because it is difficult to continue painting, when one’s artworks quietly pile up in the storage, just gathering dust. If there is no one available to share the initial creative impulse that made the artist paint, sculpt, or film, then the whole artistic process may come to a halt. So, when somebody buys an artist’s work, they do not just financially support the artist, they also signal that their art is relevant and needed. ”
What is your dream project?
“One of my art teachers would tell me that I should paint in large formats because I have a lot to say. Probably, she was right.
Small artworks represent only a fragment of a certain artistic idea or vision; it is impossible to fit everything into a small canvas. In other words, my compositions would inevitably spill over small canvases, because the latter allow only for fragmentary ideas. Painting on a large canvas is a challenge, but one can consistently develop their ideas and see how they connect with each other in the process.
I would love to try my hand at some large urban design project, I really love street art. I also hope to show my “White Room” installation, which combines painting and an evocative soundscape, in a professional gallery or a museum milieu one day.
I would also be delighted to work as a stage designer, perhaps somewhere on Broadway: I used to make sets for amateur plays and I still remember how greatly I enjoyed that! I am aware that these are ambitious plans, but I have always been ambitious in a positive way. This is what has made my life so eventful and interesting.”
