Trained as a restorer, Olha Shtein is a restorer. She studied at the Academy of Arts and completed internships in museums while simultaneously developing as an artist. For Shtein, art is life — and, naturally, also a profession.
Until 2021, Shtein’s work was more accessible, decorative, and closer to fine art. Then she chose to follow her own path, moving toward more conceptually complex and “less immediately understandable” art.
The solo laboratory exhibition You Feed Them, They Feed You. Nothing in Common was organized as an experimental project within the museum space. Shtein explored the process of fermentation and its connection to social processes, allowing visitors to observe it firsthand. She chose this format to invite audiences to reflect on difficult questions without clear answers. The exhibition-laboratory embraces ambiguity, presenting experiences without judgment and allowing multiplicity.
According to the artist: “…Fermentation is an act of delicately balanced cooperation that leads to deep mutual benefits. As in meditation, it relies on activity, intention, and decision. When we ferment, we build and design systems that center care and attentiveness as a practice.”
Embodiment, strength, and vulnerability are central to Shtein’s projects. The process of fermentation, together with the museum walls, becomes a symbol of protection — almost a shelter for the objects within.
A key aspect of Shtein’s artistic method is her own psychotherapy: her works are created with therapeutic intent (sometimes self-therapeutic), as well as with the desire to explore modes of coexistence free from competition or exclusion. Olha Shtein prefers to act and create from a position of inclusion and engagement rather than critique.