Olivia Zubko’s work in sculpture, utilizing ceramic, fibers, and found materials is thematically centered around the bathroom and other domestic of private environments, employing cast replicas of fixtures and found materials to create sculptures that evoke the viewer’s personal memories and associations with these intimate spaces. Zubko’s work investigates the nuanced relationship between these objects and the human body, as well as the broader dynamic between the individual and the domestic sphere of private space and personal intimacy.
The sculptures often take form as compound objects, made up of both vague and familiar elements from the bathroom and domestic landscape. The merging and interaction of these elements enhance their resonance with the human form. Through gentle gestures in porcelain and stoneware, the sculptures revel in that which is simultaneously strange, beautiful, and perhaps awkward as the body itself can be.
Olivia Zubko (born in 1995, Chicago, IL) has had solo shows at Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, California and in Chicagoland, at the Arts Club of Chicago, DeGroot Fine Art, Cleaner Gallery + Projects, and McHenry County College. Her work has been included in group shows at Patient Info and The Plan, both in Chicago, and at Rockford University, Illinois. Her work has also been featured in Create! Magazine and Red Skate Mag. She is a current fellow at The Arts Club of Chicago. Zubko received her BFA in 2020 from Northern Illinois University, and lives and works in Chicagoland.