OLGA TEKSHEVA AND THE REBELLIOUS GRAMMAR OF MATERIALS
Olga Teksheva (Moscow, 1973) is an artist who has long been developing an artistic inquiry articulated through a visual and conceptual vocabulary intrinsically tied to a multifaceted biographical identity, marked by deep cultural layering and a transnational sensitivity. Her practice, centered on the use of textile media, materializes in complex narrative works. Through techniques such as textile collage, embroidery, crochet, and manual weaving, she creates works of high material and symbolic density, conceived to activate an immersive and multisensory interaction with the viewer.
Her work explores the endless potential of textiles as an expressive language, rooted in a deeply articulated biographical and cultural vision. Since childhood, fabric has represented for her a living material, charged with emotional and symbolic value — a relationship that has developed and enriched itself over the course of her life. Raised in an environment where maternal and familial textile traditions were essential, she displayed from a young age a natural inclination towards the creation of fabric assemblages, developing a kind of early visual lexicon which, although lacking theoretical awareness, already anticipated the spatial compositional approach that would later define her artistic inquiry.
Initially oriented towards fashion and textile design, the political and economic context of the 1990s — marked by the systemic crisis affecting Russia — led the artist to revise her plans and turn towards an academic path that would better respond to the need for stability. Enrolled in the Faculty of Art History at Moscow’s Lomonosov University, this decision marked the beginning of a theoretical reflection that would accompany her artistic career. During this period, she collaborated with textile artist Natalia Muradova, who taught her techniques such as batik, weaving, and textile sculpture — experiences that profoundly transformed her relationship with the material. At the same time, she began a journalistic career that led her to write first for Nezavisimaya Gazeta and later for major publications like L’Officiel, Collezioni, and Cosmopolitan, exploring themes related to fashion, culture, and aesthetics.
In 2008, she decided to move to Rome to study Fashion and Theatre Design at the Accademia di Costume e Moda. Although she began designing collections during this period, her true passion revealed itself in the experimentation with materials: draping, surface manipulation, haute couture embroidery. Her final collection, composed of sculptural forms in shantung silk, was selected in 2011 to be presented at the Feudi di San Marzano Festival d’Arte Contemporanea (Feudi di San Marzano Contemporary Art Festival), marking a significant recognition in the art world. A paradigm shift occurred with the birth of her daughter, a moment that led her to focus entirely on her artistic practice. Starting in 2015, Teksheva began a critical reflection on traditional embroidery, deconstructing its codes through a conceptual approach. This work culminated in 2017 with her first solo show, C’era una volta un pesce seduto su un albero (Once Upon a Time, There Was a Fish Sitting on a Tree), an exhibition project that marked a turning point with the creation of her first large-scale textile fiber installation. Her studies in theatre would prove fundamental in laying the groundwork for her installations, whose interactive nature presupposes the participation of the audience in dialogue with the work — just as a scenography requires its actors.
Her works are characterized by a strong imaginative component, nourished by an intimate and magical relationship with nature, experienced as a source of both formal and spiritual inspiration. Her research always begins with the observation and graphic transcription of natural surfaces such as pebbles, leaves, bark, and shells. These natural patterns become true visual alphabets that, once transferred into embroidery, define the language of her work. But nature, for Teksheva, is not merely an iconographic reference — it is a true grammar, a generative device that fuels her artistic production.
The visionary component of her work, however, is not limited to nature but also embraces the imagery of the Italian Renaissance, which she became acquainted with early on through her mother’s library. The ethereal images of Botticelli, Beato Angelico, Mantegna, and other great masters became symbols of an ideal world—a spiritual elsewhere that nourished her quest for the sublime. This desire for transcendence has remained a powerful driver of her practice, allowing even her most concrete works to acquire a spiritual dimension. The relationship between content and form in her work is a generative process that unfolds through emotional, mental, and cultural stratification. Her works take shape after a long process of sedimentation of lived experiences, readings, desires, and reflections that intertwine with the study of history and archaeology — disciplines that are fundamental to her work. A symbolic example of this process is the series Rocks. We Are Tender, developed during the lockdown. The series reflects on the fragility and resilience of the human condition, with the stone — symbol of durability — becoming a metaphor for our vulnerability.
The selection of materials is a crucial moment in the artist’s creative process. It is not a mere aesthetic choice but rather an almost ritual act, in which the material carries a story, a provenance, an emotional density. Fabrics, trimmings, buttons, and even fragments of haute couture textiles are elements the artist collects and preserves, treating them as genuine “treasures” that carry the memory of the past. Each fragment becomes part of a contemporary narrative that fuses textile art with a political and poetic act of recovery and transformation.
Olga Teksheva’s artistic practice is intrinsically plural, intersecting different cultural and spiritual traditions that have shaped her biography. Raised in a family comprising six ethnicities and four religions, she learned early on to navigate worldviews that were often irreconcilable, yet in their everyday coexistence, generated a harmonious dialogue. Her art reflects this plurality: each work is a composition of overlapping fragments that complement and enrich one another. Diverse techniques, heterogeneous materials, and distant traditions coexist in her works, which become the synthesis of a quest profoundly tied to memory and culture.
Teksheva has also developed a poetics of matter, in which fabric is not only a visible surface but a sensory threshold that invites the body and imagination to interact. Her installations, conceived to activate space, become sensory environments where the audience is invited to come into direct contact with the work. In this perspective, the artist’s work is never self-referential but takes shape as an invitation to rediscover the wonder and beauty of the world through gesture, material, and form.
In one of her most representative works, Hidden Treasures, she explores the link between memory and identity, creating a tapestry in continuous transformation, made of cocoons and fragments that evoke the past, but also the impermanence of the present. Each element, each fragment, invites the viewer to explore the inner world, to examine the richness hidden in details, and to recognize the value of individuality—in its uniqueness and continuous transformation. Teksheva invites us to reflect on what is visible and what is hidden, in a play of parallel realities that awakens memory and imagination.
Her works thus belong to a magical, symbolic, and poetic dimension that weaves through matter, memories, and cultural identities — transforming them into a tapestry that not only tells stories but also embodies and continuously transforms them.
