Premio Combat Prize

Oksana Levchenya-Konstantinovska was born in 1975 in Bershad, Vinnitsa Region, Ukraine in a family where medical practice has been a tradition. Even so, from the very childhood Oksana has started being interested in art through exploration of the home collection of books that has included the history of art and the works of successful artists. From the age of 17, however, for the sake of family legacy, she has begun to pursue the medical profession working as a junior nurse. In a few years later, Oksana has moved to Kyiv, where she has entered A. A. Bogomolets National Medical University, and has taken a training route to become a surgeon. Yet, over the years of discovering who she really is, Oksana has turned back to art and, in 2005, has graduated from the School of Architectural design in Kyiv. A turning point in Oksana’s career has been marked by the acquaintance with a renowned Kyiv city painter and graphic artist Alexandra Prakhova, member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. Sasha, as Alexandra Prakhova called herself, represented the dynasty of Prakhov in the fourth generation, has taught Oksana the art of painting. In 2009, Oksana has been invited as a guest to the exhibition at Bereznytska & Partners Art Gallery, at that time curated by the Australian artist Adam Nankervis, nomadic museum MuseumMAN, where she has showed her paintings to Adam. The artist has appreciated Oksana’s talent and has included her work to the exhibition Torn World that, later the same year, has been also exhibited in Ukrainian House in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since then, Oksana’s works have been seen around the world in such notable art venues as ArtByGeneva Fair in Geneva; National Cultural-Art Museum Complex Mystetskyi Arsenal, FineArt Gallery, Ukrainian House, Bereznytska & Partners Art Gallery in Kyiv, Ukraine; Art gallery Sady Pobedy in Odesa, Ukraine; Art Southampton, New York; Gagliardi Gallery, London; ARTPALMBEACH-2012, Miami; Fondamenta degli Incurabili, Venice. In 2017, Oksana has been awarded a Special Mention for Excellence at the London Art Biennale. The same year, the artist’s personal journey has led her to another project that combined scientific approach and artistic thinking. Exhibition named Find your tribe and love them hard at Shcherbenko Art Center (Kyiv, Ukraine) is a manifest of social identity, first proposed by British psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in 1979. The theory discusses person’s sense of belonging to a particular social group. Through the set of photographs, where Oksana wears ritual makeup of African, South African and Australian tribes, she explores people’s eagerness to classify themselves as a specific group member and to be equated to a particular nation, occupation and gender. For a while after, within the conceptual framework of anthropological approach of national cultural patterns, Oksana has launched OLK Manufactory, a company that produces traditional and hand-woven rugs and tapestries. Every woven article involves Oksana’s careful work with national ethnographic museums. The artist handpicks the most prominent patterns of masters who lived in 16th – early 20th centuries, redraws and implements symbols of contemporary times in them. Thus, creates an inviting dialogue between generations connecting traditional Ukrainian patterns with modern fictional characters. As well as earlier photography exhibition Find your tribe and love them hard, Oksana’s new solo exhibition Nonexistent Tribes held in November 2018 at BURSA gallery, has demonstrated her continuing interest in exploring the theory of social identity. Represented costumes and masks embody a mythological image of a person who doesn’t belong to any community, thus is released from stereotypes imposed by social principles. The most recent exhibition Totem of Recycling, which has begun around the same time as the previous, tackles the problem of over-consumption and consumerist lifestyle of the modern society.