Olga Kopenkina is a Belarus-born independent curator and art critic based in New York City.
Education: In 1990, Kopenkina graduated from State Belarusian University, major in Russian and Slavic Philology. In 2001, she completed her M.A. in curating from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY.
Curating. Olga curated the exhibition “The Work of Love, the Queer of Labor” at Pratt Manhattan Gallery in 2022, which is a second iteration of the 2017 exhibition she co-curated with Yevgeniy Fiks for Franklin Street Works in Stamford, CT (for more information go to Curatorial). For Pratt Manhattan Gallery, she also curated the exhibition Feminism is Politics! in 2016.
In 2014-2015, Olga was a curator of Lenin: icebreaker Revisited at Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.
In 2012, on support of Polish Cultural Institute NY and Austrian Cultural Forum NY, she organized exhibition Sound of Silence: Art during Dictatorship at EFA Project Space, NY, showcasing artists’ works that address political climate in post-2010-election Belarus.
In 2008, she was a recipient of grant from BRIC Rotunda gallery’s Emerging Curator Program, which resulted in the exhibition Properly Past.
Olga organized exhibitions Russia: Significant Other at Anna Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia (2006), and Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions at the First Moscow Biennale (2005).
Kopenkina organized the following film programs: “Emergency Turned Upside Down,” films by Oliver Ressler (May 2017), and “Becoming Zoya”, films by Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya (aka Gluklya, 2016) for UnionDocs, Brooklyn: Feminism is Politics! for Beursschouwburg (Brussels, Belgium, 2013); Terror Tactics at gallery apex art (New York, 2007) and It’s not paranoia when they are really after you, for the National Institute of Contemporary art, Pro Arte gallery (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2003).
Writing: Olga wrote extensively on contemporary art issues, focusing on Eastern European art in a broader context of political histories. Kopenkina’s publications regularly appeared in Moscow Art Journal (in Russian and English). Her publication “Solitude of Collectivism,” a discussion with Martha Rosler, Pablo Helguera and Yevgeniy Fiks, commissioned by Moscow Art Journal, was published by Documenta 12 Magazines project (2007). Olga has written reviews for Art Journal, Field Journal, Hyperallergic, ArtMargins, Rethinking Marxism, Manifesta Journal, Modern Painters, Afterimage, and others. She is an author of catalog essays for “Feminism is Politics!”, “The Work of Love, the Queer of Labor,” “Lenin: Icebreaker Revisited” and others. Her essays on Yevgeniy Fiks’ projects are published in books Lenin for your Library? (Ante Projects, 2007) and Communist Guide to New York City (New York: Common room, 2008).
She is a contributor to the online project Parallel Chronologies, An Archive of Eastern European Exhibitions.
Occupation: From 1990 to 1998, Kopenkina worked as a museum educator and lecturer at Belarusian National Art Museum in Minsk, Belarus. Simultaneously, she served as a curator at the gallery 6th Line assisting and curating exhibitions of contemporary Belarusian and international artists. Current: Serves as an adjunct professor at Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, Steinhardt, and Fordham University, Department of Communication and Media Studies.