Eve. The "WJ" Series

Olena Shtepura is a Ukrainian artist working with painting, textile, and installation.

Olena Shtepura's art has been exhibited in Ukraine and abroad. Since 2022, she has actively participated in international shows and residencies. 

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. Since 2022, she has been actively involved in international exhibitions and art residencies across Europe.

Artwork of Olena Shtepura extends far beyond painting: she works as a theatre set designer and has already created scenography for more than ten productions.

The artist currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria. 

Olena's main medium is painting, but her practice also includes graphics, textile works, and installations. Her famous 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 work, "A Restless Citizen's Dream", belongs to a series of reflective paintings on society. It examines this theme through the lens of how new generations exist within this reality. This work is an act of introspection and a critical examination of social and ideological questions. The duality and ambiguity in the perception of society reveal the complexity of an individual’s interaction with the surrounding world — or even their complete absorption by it.

These works were digitized by UFDA and are available for purchase via auction or direct sale on the website.

Olena's 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.