Olga Balema

Olga Balema’s sculptural objects are at once abstract and representational. In the New York-based artist’s more figurative work, she creates cast objects that echo familiar forms such as gloves, seemingly abandoned by or in search of a body to wear them. Other works rely on a more abstract notion of the body, such as her clear sacks filled with metal or paint shards suspended in liquid inside and supported by metal rods; here, the artist defines a body as an interior bound by a soft skin and structured by a skeleton. Balema’s notion of the body troubles philosophical schisms between concepts of object and subject, while also accounting for feminist or technologically motivated notions of the body.