Olga Neff Explores Identity and Memory Across Media in Forthcoming Installation Understudies

Olga Neff, an artist engaged in various mediums such as photography, video, sound, text, objects, installation, and performance, earned her Master's degree from the Institute of Visual Arts in Russia in 2025. Prior to her artistic career, she pursued studies in economics, worked in consulting, and operated her own business. Her work explores the interplay between the body and its environment, focusing on movement, memory, and the fleeting moments of transition. In the photograph Beyond, part of the Cicle series, an open palm adorned with a small wrist tattoo contrasts with the shadow of Neff's daughter’s hand reaching towards it. Created in a studio with a single light source in roughly twenty minutes, the image resonates with Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and echoes Marcel Duchamp's notion of the infra-thin. Neff's upcoming installation, Understudies, encourages viewers to reflect on their past selves and the identities they have adopted or overlooked, framing identity through theatrical roles and suggesting that former selves remain part of one's current identity. Her immersive approach is influenced by childhood performances, adult theater experiences, and her life straddling different countries and languages, using recording as a means to capture experiences amid the flux of change.