Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova was born in Sofia in 1960. She graduated from the Art Academy in her native city. She emerged onto the alternative contemporary Bulgarian art scene around 1995, creating sculptures and installations mainly consisting of handmade paper.
Oleg Lyahova is widely appreciated for her capacity for uncovering the ‘invisible’, luring out the fragile, often ephemeral states of objects, people and the relationships that form between them. This perception and reframing of the unseen is at the core of her practice and recognition and is a central part of what makes her stand out in an overly cynical landscape of contemporary art.
During the years, Oleg Lyahova has embraced a seemingly endless list of materials, with the desired effect of a project dictating or shaping her choice of material: paper, sheet iron, nails, spoons, soap, sand, ice, ice cream, Turkish delight and cotton candy have all – at one point – featured in her material descriptions. More recently, the artist has increasingly turned towards video-installation and camera work in a tireless effort to capture and immortalise the intangible and elusive. These media also allow her to instrumentalise temporality in her creative process and as a creative subject, as she had done previously with the sun in her still-life photos.
Over the years, Oleg Lyahova’s projects have explored a range of themes: Frames, a 6 projections installation, was centred around various visual and social limitations; The Inexorable Nature of the Renaissance, The Irresistible Charm of Impressionism and The Irrefutable Argument of Conceptualism, created between 2012 and 2013, retraced seminal movements in art history such as the Renaissance, Impressionism and Conceptualism and challenged them by exposing their limitations. These installations were presented alongside a previous work – Talk (2005) – where she and other artists were recorded discussing important figures of art and its history. Burden, on the other hand, is a much more intimate, personal and even biographical project.
Among her most important solo exhibitions are: On The Kitchen Table, Little Bird Place, Sofia, Bulgaria (2020); Frames, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria (2013); Eco-stories, The warehouse, Sofia, Bulgaria (2011); Globally and on a long-term basis the situation is positive, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria (2009); Moderate Optimism, 6 September Street, No. 9, Sofia, Bulgaria (2008); Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova, Centre for Contemporary Art, Pancevo, Serbia (2008); The Lions of Sofia, Artists’ Association fabs, Warsaw, Poland (2006) and the Goethe Institute, Sofia, Bulgaria (2005); Vanitas, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan (2004). She is the laureate of the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for 2009.
Oleg Lyahova lives and works in Sofia.
