Olha Povoroznyk (Ukraine)
Olha Povoroznyk (1986) is a Ukrainian poet and filmmaker, born in Lviv. She is engaged in documentary and art projects at the intersection of video and text. She is the author of the poetry collection “Name of Water” (Krok, 2019). Her poems have been published in several magazines and anthologies.
In 2015, Olha presented her first short poetic film “Name of Water” at the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York. That same year, the premiere of the first documentary film “I See” took place at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Her short poetic film “Slowworm” (2017) took the main award in the national competition of the International Video Poetry Festival “Cyclops” in Kyiv. In Lviv, October 2015, at the 21st International Contemporary Music Festival “Contrasts,” the multimedia project “Preparation” by Ostap Slyvinskyi was presented, combining texts by writers who experienced war in the Balkans, contemporary classical music (Bohdan Sehin), video (Olha Povoroznyk), and performance (Ostap Slyvinskyi). In 2018, Povoroznyk, together with Slyvinskyi, Sehin, and Yuri Bulka, presented another multimedia project “Winter King” based on Slyvinskyi’s poetry. In the spring of 2018, the first solo exhibition of graphics “Curves” took place in Kyiv, and 2019, the exhibition of graphics “Dance for Yourself” was held in Lviv and Arnhem (Netherlands). Povoroznyk has illustrated several books, including her poetry book “The Name of Water”, In 2019, as a filmmaker, she, along with the Center for Urban History, produced a series of short documentary films exploring the relationship between the artist and the city through the example of 12 Lviv artists.
In 2021, Olha created two poetic films: a film based on her poems “Port DeBorn” and a joint project with Ostap Slyvinskyi – “Open Windows.” In 2021, together with the Dialogue Arts Council, she created a documentary series “Change of Changes,” which collects and interprets memories and reflections on Lviv’s cultural and intellectual contexts on the eve of and immediately after Independence.
In 2022–2023, she was in residency at Takt Berlin Leipzig Zeitz in Germany. The result of the residency was a group exhibition of Ukrainian artists “Save Place” at the Tapir Gallery in Berlin, where Olha presented the project “Survivor’s Guilt” (texts, videos). The Ukrainian Theater in Berlin, under the direction of director Pavlo Kravtsiv, staged the play “Trap” based on Olha’s texts. In 2023, she became a finalist for the UNESCO City of Literature Lviv Award.
