Olena Shtepura Joins UFDA
Anna Cherevko
Table of Contents
The Ukrainian Fund of Digitized Art (UFDA) has officially expanded its online archive to include the works of Olena Shtepura. A rising name in the contemporary scene, Shtepura’s practice spans painting, textiles, and installation art, blending tactile tradition with modern conceptualism.
This new digital entry features 20 curated works, ensuring her intricate physical pieces are preserved and accessible to a global audience.
About Olena Shtepura
The artist was born in 1994 in Nizhyn, Chernihiv region, Ukraine. She studied at the Taras Shevchenko State Art Secondary School in Kyiv (2008–2012). From 2012 to 2016, she completed a Bachelor's degree in Scenography at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, where she later continued her studies and received a Master's degree in Painting in 2018.
Olena Shtepura's original paintings have been showcased in exhibition projects since her student years. She has held five solo exhibitions, including in Kyiv and Vienna, and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad.
Olena currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
Olena Shtepura's Digitized Paintings
Olena's main medium is painting, but her practice also includes graphics, textile works, and installations. Her digitized works include such pieces as "Dream", "Will There Be Little Feet Running Around", the "Episodes" Series, "A Restless Citizen's Dream", the "Templates" Series, and many more.
Her works are figurative and image-driven, focusing on the exploration of the body, female identity, traumatic experience, migration, and war. Her personal experience of living between different cultural and social contexts is a key component of her artistic language.
Working at the intersection of expressionism and surrealism, Olena often pushes her imagery towards abstraction. Her paintings are unapologetically bold — true statement works — yet they carry a delicate feminine touch that softens the intensity and makes the visual language uniquely compelling.