Born in the United States to a family of Ukrainian immigrants, Ola Rondiak grew up feeling “extremely Ukrainian.” However, when she moved to Ukraine in 1995, it didn’t feel like home at first. It took her years to adapt.
Her soul-searching has given the artist inspiration for her creations. Her latest exhibition of paintings, “Identity, Interrupted,” will take place in Kyiv on March 24 — April 9.
As the daughter of first-generation American immigrants, Rondiak, now 51, remained closely connected to Ukraine. She learned the Ukrainian language, thanks to her parents, Saturday school and Sunday church. She learned the history and traditions.
But because she never visited Ukraine in childhood, the country seemed more like a fairytale than a real place, Rondiak says. The stories told to her by her grandfather added to the mystique.
In the early 1990s, shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, Rondiak married another Ukrainian-American, Petro Rondiak, a philanthropist who heads the management board of Winner Group Ukraine.
In 1995, they moved to Ukraine.
“It wasn’t Ukraine that I expected,” she says.
One of the early shocks: Everyone around her was speaking Russian.
Restoring identity
More than 20 years later, Rondiak feels Ukrainian again and is proud to be one. It wasn’t an easy path though.
Rondiak was a witness and a participant of two Ukraine’s revolutions: the Orange Revolution in 2004 that overturned the presidential election rigged for Viktor Yanukovych and the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013– 2014 that overthrew Yanukovych, elected president in 2010.
“It’s been an honor to watch Ukraine grow,” she says, adding that EuroMaidan brought back the image of Ukraine she remembered from her childhood — of Ukrainians fighting for freedom and dignity.
Rondiak believes that the events of EuroMaidan prompted many Ukrainians to challenge their lives. That’s why her upcoming exhibit “Identity, Interrupted” will touch the souls of many in Ukraine, she hopes.
In her paintings, Ola Rondiak uses newspaper clippings for context and to create various moods for her art. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Painting, healing
Rondiak’s education and career belong to the field of psychotherapy, but she also was a designer. She says that designing clothes requires business savvy and didn’t give her the creative outlets she craved. So she took up painting. But as a mother to three children, it took her until 2012 before she could devote meaningful attention to her art.
Her studio is located in the third-floor attic of the house in Kyiv’s suburbs where she lives with her husband and youngest daughter, Maia. The room is filled with her artwork: canvases, collages, sculptures and items of the ready-made clothes that she has modified.
Rondiak says she feels that her “Ukrainian identity finds a way to flow out” and it is also therapeutic in helping to “heal the scars” left after the EuroMaidan Revolution.
In her paintings, Rondiak often uses newspaper clippings as elements of clothes or accessories that her characters — mostly female ones — wear.
Words printed on the clippings help put the artwork in the context of some particular event or create mood. Sometimes she also uses elements typical for religious icons. By doing so, she pays respect to her grandmother, who spent several years in a Soviet labor camp. There, at nights, her grandmother would secretly make embroidered icons, using whatever material she could find.
Rondiak says her art represents female identity as well. Working on female portraits, Rondiak addresses the issue of sexism. As a child, she witnessed her mother’s limited professional opportunities as an immigrant who didn’t know English and had two children to raise.
“Women should create some independence for themselves before they start a family,” Rondiak says.
In Ukraine
“Identity, Interrupted.”
Tauvers Gallery International (6 Olhynska St.) March 24 — April 9. Free.
Registration is required for the exhibition’s opening at 4 p.m. on March 24. www.tauvers-gallery. com
In the United States
See Ola Rondiak’s “Behind the Lines” exhibition:
- Greenwich, Connecticut. Zorya Fine Art Gallery. Until March 24. www.zoryafineart.com/exhibitions
- New York. Ukrainian Institute of America. Opening on May 4. www.ukrainianinstitute.org
