SUBTYL: Oksana Sadovenko

Where?

• in an unused building* at Somolického 14

  • Somolického 824/14, 811 06 Bratislava

When?

• Programme for the opening day, 29.8.2026: 

  • 17:00 – doors open
  • 18:00 – welcome remarks
  • 18:30 – Peter Janíček / drone ambient (computer + analog mixing desk)
  • 19:15 – Richard Hronský / post-folklore ambient (fujara + computer)

  • FB Event

• Exhibition duration:

  • Saturday 30.8. (14:00 – 18:00)
  • Sunday 31.8. (14:00 – 18:00)

• Admission is free (with the option of a voluntary contribution), just as we are organising this without funding.

Curator: Richard Hronský

Curatorial text

After the disappearance of urban dovecotes as a result of 20th-century urbanisation, not a single new one has appeared in Bratislava to date.¹ Recently, however, a message came from a nearby milieu with a clear call – to return folk creativity to the people and to take the city back to itself. I first encountered Oksana in the street. She was looking at me through the eye of a paper pigeon glued to a house façade. It wasn’t just once, but several times, in different places. We met in person at the 2022 Winter Market in the Kunsthalle Bratislava, an institution abolished by “raptors” – the very predators who marginalise freedom.

„A bird is always a mediator between the sky and the earth, even if it is just a street pigeon, and the iconostasis is a magical division between these two worlds. In the time of the war started by the aggressor against my country, one cannot help thinking about the boundary between life and death, about the suffering of innocent people. The construction of my iconostasis resembles a symbolic dovecote, a symbolic home, or a home under reconstruction or an abandoned home,“ writes Oksana Sadovenko in an interview with Jana Geržová.²

It was already clear then where her major work Pigeon Iconostasis (2022) was heading. Today we stand before a newly realised unofficial urban dovecote – the conscious and the unconscious of the painter Oksana Sadovenko (with DOM – “house” – embedded in the word). Before a house as an object that reactivates the frozen phases of day and night, wakefulness and sleep.

– Richard Hronský

^{1 – Duleba, A. – Dovecotes in Slovakia and their cultural significance. In: Etnologické rozpravy, 2019.
2 – Sadovenko, O. „Návod na prežitie“ / “Survival Guide.” Interview with Jana Geržová. In: Profil 1/2024, 2024.}

Oksana Sadovenko (*1988)

Oksana Sadovenko is a broadly ranging artist, an ambassador of living creativity, and a native of Kyiv living in Slovakia. She completed a Master’s degree in Painting in Ukraine and continued with another Master’s at the AFAD Department of Painting (studio 3EAM with Rastislav Sedláčik). She is a recent graduate, although even before finishing her studies she had already actively established herself within the Ukrainian-Slovak contemporary context.

In her painting she personifies the anatomy of pigeons, tirelessly creates objects, is interested in urbanism, flying machines and mythology, and deciphers the work of Ukrainian women artists and artists without the narratives of Russian propaganda, through the lens of decolonisation. She has held several solo exhibitions in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Belgium, and has taken part in the group exhibitions Rozptyl (2023), Miesto toho (2024) and Pohroma (2025 – currently running).

Subtyl

Subtyl is a format under Rozptyl and presents episodes of gentle, temporary/ephemeral art exhibitions and situations in unused, abandoned or unofficial spaces. It is a micro-format – a “laboratory of life” that explores ephemerality and creativity in conditions where art is part of everyday life. In this way Subtyl approaches the idea of “temporary autonomous zones” (Hakim Bey) – free spaces beyond institutional control, where creation becomes a shared experiment.