Olena Golub

"Digital yard №3".Catalogue, 2008

Olena Golub was born on December 25, 1951 in Kyiv, in Soviet Ukraine, to an intellectual family. Her parents acted on stage as a singers before her father, Yevgen Golub, became a journalist and her mother, Zinaida Morozova, became an official. She graduated from Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv in 1974, department of biophysics. She worked for some time as an engineer, but dreamed of becoming a professional artist. In the 1970s she refused to join the Arts' Academy, against creating compositions in the spirit of Soviet ideology. Thus, she took private drawing lessons and graduated from the Institute of Journalistic Skill in 1986, Faculty Artists press.

She worked as an illustrator in magazines, an editor at the publishing house, etc. She is author of more than 100 publications on contemporary art. Her husband is culturologist Peter Yakovenko and her daughter is photographer Anna Golub. Her son Andrey Yakovenko is a designer. She lives in Kyiv and frequently travels abroad with exhibitions.

Olena Golub. My parents's song. С.,о.,60х40, 1999

Her career began with opposition to the Socialist Realism in a circle of underground artists, when she was writing in the style of Expressionism. Avant-garde young people in Kyiv founded an association, the Rukh Movement, in which writers, scientists, and artists gathered. In 1977 they organized an exhibition with artists Yuri Kosin, Nik Niedzelski, Mikola Trehub, Vudon Baklitsky, Alexander Kostetsky, Olena Golub, Nicholas Zalevsky and others.[1] Her memories about underground time and artists persons were printed in the book (in Ukrainian) Olena Golub. The Bright and Gloomy days of Underground Artists. Kyiv, Published House “Antiquary”, 2017, ISBN 978-617-7285-11-2

Her artworks was inspired by Ukrainian avant-garde in the beginning of the 20th century, particularly by Wassily Kandinsky ("Engineer's portrait", "Empty plate", "Two", etc.)

The second surge of lifting art by Olena Golub is associated with the revival of civic activities and the advent of private galleries, where she began to exhibit new works. Her paintings such as "Aunt", "Fisherman", "Chupa-chups, or the illusion of equality" increased the social-critical motif with characteristic of Ukrainians humor. The second surge of lifting art by Olena Golub associated with the revival of civic activities and the advent of private galleries, where she began to exhibit new works. In her paintings such as «Aunt», «Fisherman», «Chupa-chups, or the illusion of equality» increased social-critical motif with characteristic for Ukrainians hints of humor.[2][3][4]

O.Golub.Series: Bronze age, asphalt period. # 10. Digital collage . 2018

Since 2003, Lena began to create photo installations using computer technology. Art critic Nina Sayenko has written: «Turning to contemporary computer technologies, the artist, as is her custom, pungently felt the pulse and rhythm of the time. By confronting and comparing various historical photographic materials she is in the process of solving philosophical problems of existence itself. The new series features the transformation of family traditions and generational ties along with the global transformation of conscience in material reviewing the totalitarian past (Yes and No, The Totalitarian Ballade, and Recipient Unknown). Olena Golub calls upon us to return to human problems and perception of the human essence. In her works the fates of historical persons (Stalin, Hitler, etc) are closely interlaced with personages from family albums, who act together in the historical context. They pose questions about everybody’s connection with and responsibility for everything that ever happened or is happening now (Who to Be With? and He, She, They...). Today Olena Golub is on a new turn in her creative flight. One cannot but wish to become one of the characters she has created, the Yellow Hare, rising high above our omnivorous globalization and broad expansion of the mass media and fill oneself with the sense of freedom and independence.»[5]

Since 2003, Lena began to create photo installations using computer technology. She frequently returned to human problems and reworked historical figures. Today, Golub continues working with new ideas, encompassing globalization in her work.[6]

She has found considerable opportunities to create own visual language using digital technology and based on «mental structures» as she says.[7]

A trend accentuated on digital technology in the arts she realized in the «G. V. Kh.» - group: Golub, Vysheslavsky, Kharchenko. Their project «Digital yard № 3» was shown in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2008).[8]

The Hungarian art critic Gabor Pataki noted:
«She calls her method as «narrative constructivism», in which you can see the embodiment of the ideas of the photomontage discoverers Rodchenko, Klutsis and Lissitzky. But while her predecessors constructed their works believing in a world that would soon become better and fairer, Golub can only acknowledge all these ideas as unsuccessful. »[9]

As art critic Olena Golub explores several directions.

• Alternative art in a broad sense, and in particular underground culture.[26][27][28][29][30]

• Art works created on the basis of new, digital, technologies.[31][32]

• The essence of the creative process in modern world.[33][34][35][36][37]

• Art market lows and freedom of the artist.[38][39]
• Interaction of Ukrainian and Western art.[40][41]

• International exhibition ART IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE
• «Artificial Intelligence» - International Digital Miniprint Exhibition 15 Ottawa, Canada
• Artists.de.Lena Golub

• Olena Golub in the NUAU.