Olia Mishchenko

Olia Mishchenko was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1980. She lived there until 1997, when her family immigrated to Canada. From 1998-2004, Mishchenko studied at the University of Toronto, with a major in art history and a specialization in architectural studies. While a student she was already a familiar and distinctive participant in the newly emergent West Queen West art scene, associated with some of its signature group entities such as West Wing Gallery and the Hidden Cameras. She joined an intersection of art, architecture and activism, defined locally by Adrian Blackwell and Kenneth Hayes (Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto) and Marie-Paule Macdonald (School of Architecture, University of Waterloo), which sought to radically locate the meeting point of design, practice and theory. Hayes especially has remained a key mentor.

Mishchenko first appeared as an artist in the 2003 Psychotopes group show organized by German curator Markus Muller at YYZ Artist Outlet. She and Steve Kado (a fellow polymath artist/musician student prodigy from the University of Toronto) created souvenirs for an immense fantasized wall encircling downtown Toronto (a hybrid of the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall), a quarantine landmark for which the post-SARS city might be famed. These satirical, somewhat crude tokens of perverse civic pride gave little indication of the intricate, delicate, laborious, expansive drawings by which Mishchenko since made her name. 2005 of Top 3000 comprised her tour de force solo debut at Mercer Union in July 2004. Mishchenko first showed with a commercial gallery in 2005, at Paul Petro Contemporary Art, where she had subsequent solo exhibitions in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Her idiosyncratic drawings struck a chord with a wide audience. Mishchenko took artist residencies in San Augustin, Oaxaca, Mexico City in 2006 and Schoppingen, Germany in 2007 for travel, research and to concentrate on her art. At a local residency at the Koffler Gallery, North York, 2007-2008, over a period of six weeks she created a massive, ephemeral drawing directly on the wall which amplified her vision without magnifying its elements. A binocular stand, such as one might find at Niagara Falls or the CN Tower, was available for the spectator to scan the details.