Olga Rudenko
Olga Rudenko is a Ukrainian-born artist based in New York City. Trained in stone and wood carving and holding a Master’s degree in the history of philosophy, she works across sculpture, textiles, painting, and digital language to explore how human identity is reshaped by ideology and technology.
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"My practice centers on the concept of alteration — the internal process of adapting to change — which I have lived through personally: from my childhood move to live with my grandparents, to witnessing the collapse of the Soviet Union, immigrating to the U.S., becoming a mother, and transitioning from academia to art. My current concept, AI_Augmented_Iconography, is rooted in this existential process and responds specifically to how algorithmic systems and technological tools aggressively alter the human experience — reshaping how we perceive relationships, process knowledge, and make intimate personal choices.
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"Alongside this preoccupation with transformation, I’ve carried a persistent question: What is the core that doesn’t shift? What in us remains steady — not untouched by change, but able to carry us through it? In my own search, I’ve come to believe that this core is our shared humanity. It’s not a fixed identity or spiritual certainty, but a vital, fragile presence — the part of us that can feel, witness, mourn, and imagine. It is this essence I try to protect in my work. To guard as something precious — something that science, data, and technology cannot fully alter.
"AI_Augmented_Iconography is my visual system that merges religious iconography with algorithmic language to explore how human identity is altered by ideological, technological, and scientific forces — including algorithms, avatars, filters, emojis, DNA editing, and chemical agents used to enhance beauty, longevity, and performance. The concept is rooted in my lived experience of existential alteration — not rupture, but internal reconfiguration in response to change.
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Drawing from Orthodox iconography, I use sacred visual images — halos, gold leaf, frontal stillness — and disrupt them with binary sequences, emojis, and symbolic code, rendered through ink on clay board and paper, silicone dolls, embroidery, and textiles. Embroidery and stitching, slow and laborious by nature, are deliberate choices — a conceptual opposition to the speed and automation of digital systems.
"My focus on the child figure symbolizes the fragile value of human life — and emphasizes the need to protect what is most vulnerable, and most essential, in the future of our humanity."
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Exhibitions
TBD