Visual artist Olha Sharafanenko Follow.Art Card

About me

OLHA SHARAFANENKO
(b. 2002, Izmail, Ukraine) living and working in Berlin.
Olha holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv.

Sharafanenko’s practice explores the intersection of vulnerability and inner feminine strength, focusing on themes of making a decisions, belonging, discovering individual sexuality and memory heritage. The body in her work becomes both symbol and subject. Using her own nude form as reference, she places herself in a position of exposed agency — a state where there is nothing left to manipulate, only presence, only be involved observation.

Her compositions often merge figuration with psychological landscapes, drawing parallels between internal states and external environments. In these works, landscape is not a backdrop but a continuation of emotional terrain.

Themes of memory, choice, and belonging are central to her artistic language. Working with painting, installation, and mixed media, Sharafanenko draws from her personal experience of forced migration and the ongoing process of adapting to a new reality shaped by war and geopolitical disruption.
Her expressive technique and the recurrent use of intense blue evoke transcendence, fragility, and mutability — a shifting ground upon which the search for inner stability unfolds.
After the beginning full-scale war in Ukraine, Sharafanenko was actively engaged in voluntary activism, later was invited to join a residency program at the Berlin Art Institute. This experience had a significant impact on the development of her artistic practice and became a decisive moment in her choice to settle in Berlin.

Since 2020, she has been teaching painting to both adults and children, while actively participating in group exhibitions. In parallel, she works as a curatorial assistant on various projects and art fairs, further expanding her engagement with the contemporary art scene.