Olesia Saienko, Hutsul, 2021. Digital photography Olesia Saienko, from the series Cycle of Landscape, 2023. Digital photography Olesia Saienko, from the project Want to Know a Secret, 2020. Digital photography Olesia Saienko, from the project Verification of the Paranormal Phenomenon of Vampirism within the Dimension of Prykarpattian Mythmaking, 2021. Digital photography

Olesia Saienko

/ BIO
Olesia Saienko (b.1992, Lutsk, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian photographer and artist based in Lviv. She holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from The National University of Ostroh Academy (2014). She began her career as a photojournalist in 2017 and later studied at the School of Conceptual and Art Photography MYPH (2019–2020) and the Visual Storytelling School organised by the Center for Visual Education in Lutsk (2019).
Saienko has participated in residencies including Silent Names: Anda, Hillel and Others organised by Pochen and Asortymentna Kimnata (Chemnitz, Germany, 2025) and the Künstlerhaus Andreas-Stadel residency within the CreArt project (Regensburg, Germany, 2024). She was nominated for the Pla(t)form portfolio viewing at Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland, 2025) and Fresh Eyes Talent by GUP Magazine (Netherlands, 2023).
Her works have been presented in Ukraine and internationally, including at Jam Factory Art Center (Lviv), Mala Gallery of Mystetskiy Arsenal (Kyiv), Chaussee 36 (Berlin), Silent Green Kulturquartier (Berlin) and Kulturzentrum Korotan during Rotlicht Festival (Vienna). She is represented by Asortymentna Kimnata.

/ ARTIST STATEMENT

My career began in photojournalism and freelance practice, with a focus on documentary and conceptual photography. In recent projects, I have expanded beyond photography into video, installations and artist books.
My practice explores the relationship between fiction, documentary, objectivity and post-truth, often using irony as an extension of my journalistic background. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, my focus has shifted towards themes of transformation and death. I’m an archivist and a trickster in one person.

/ IN RESIDENCE

Currently, I am slowly developing a photography project about death. This theme requires time as well as distance, making the residency an ideal opportunity to structure the existing material and reflect on its further development while refining the conceptual framework. In this photographic series, I draw inspiration from magical realism and from the medieval book Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying), which is essentially also about the art of living. I am interested in exploring these dichotomies. I also hope to research further materials related to this topic, including visiting the Museum für Sepulkralkultur in Kassel, Germany.
As the world sinks further into dystopia, I feel that the fear of death becomes increasingly relevant, pushing me towards a life-affirming, though not always obvious, discourse where fear can be transformed into acceptance and change.