Nina Ołtarzewska (b.1998) is a French/Polish artist based in London. She briefly attended the Panthéon Sorbonne’s Fine Art course before moving to Northern Ireland where she graduated with a BFA in 2021 from the Belfast School of Art. She received graduate awards from Pollen Studios, PS², Platform Arts, the University of Atypical and Bbeyond. She became a part of the Emerging Artists Programme at Flax Art Studios upon graduating and received three awards from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to fund research and exhibitions. In 2022 she moved to London to pursue an MA Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art, which she graduated from with distinction in 2024. She received Arts Council England’s DYCP Award in 2024 and is currently Artist in Residence at Blackhorse Workshop.
I make work that explores questions of identity, belief and reality in the digital age.
Exposed to Polish and Catholic influences in early childhood, I examine belief and its origins, with a particular interest in the way it is shaped and transformed by both physical and digital spaces.
My installation work is largely made of mild steel, a material primarily used for construction and fabrication purposes. Its strength and durability root the work in a familiar sensorial reality. The forms I make give shape to abstract and symbolic environments, reminiscent of the safe spaces in which identities are formed in childhood. As used in my work, smartphones are a portal into the digital world, luring the viewer into a different realm of perception, one that is full of impossible promise, untouchable and out of reach.
Yearning for answers to unanswerable questions is an essential part of the human condition, leading us to invest our existence with belief. The work I make investigates how belief forms when subjected to different realities and crucially, seeks to create an environment in which one is left to question the structural integrity of one’s own belief systems.
© Nina Ołtarzewska 2025