A candid dialogue with the past and a bold interpretation of the present – that’s what Olena Strekalova’s (Holly Haurelia) solo exhibition offered in Folkestone, on the southeastern coast of the UK. Preceding the large-scale Triennial, the show became a landmark event for the town, giving its residents and visitors the chance to see how classic Art Nouveau principles can find new life through the lens of contemporary discourse.
Art Nouveau was a revolutionary movement in art, design and architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the first modern style to reflect a desire to find new meaning in art. Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Jules Chéret, Georges de Feure and other artists created a world where natural forms dissolved into ornamental luxury, religious symbolism mingled with psychoanalysis and female images were symbols of beauty and mystery.
Today, Olena Strekalova visually inherits this tradition but radically reinterprets its content. While classical Art Nouveau celebrated women as muses, objects of admiration and contemplation, Strekalova makes women subjects of action. She constructs a visual canon in which female images are freed from traditional role constraints.
Her heroines are active characters, endowed with their own will and power. Elegant, mystical, combative, and caring, they reflect the full spectrum of multifaceted femininity.
It’s also telling how the artist engages with the legacy of mass culture. The influence of TV series and games with strong female leads on her work creates a new iconography, where pop culture archetypes connect with the sophistication of modernism. This creates a unique visual language, understandable to a generation that grew up on interactive media and non-linear narratives.
Digital myths at the exhibition in the heart of Folkestone’s Art Quarter
The recent Folkestone exhibition featured works from four of the artist’s main series:
• Beyond the known worlds is a fantasy story in the spirit of Art Nouveau, recreated in digital format
• Georgian Influence is a visual response to the problem of displacement and the aesthetics of the Caucasian region
• Phantom femininity is unconventional portraits exploring the duality of female identity
• Burlesque is an ode to performance, luxury and stage images
Strekalova’s drawings often begin with hand-drawn sketches, which the artist then processes digitally, taking into account texture, lighting and compositional rhythm. Working in the digital medium, Olena gains the freedom to experiment with form and colour in ways that were unavailable to masters of the past. Computer graphics make it possible to create the curvilinear forms and natural motifs that are characteristic of Art Nouveau, but with a new level of detail and colour possibilities.
Strekalova’s fantasy universe Beyond the Known Worlds creates a space which is free from social conventions. In Olena’s art world, problems of life and death intersect with conflicts of gender, queerness and femininity, forming a multi-layered mythology of modernity.
The exhibition aroused genuine interest among residents and visitors. The images are catching the eye, stimulating reflection on the past and prompting reflection on today’s social agenda. By exploring issues of feminism through recognisable motifs from the turn of the 20th century with the use of digital tools, Olena creates her new art: compelling and relevant today.
