Olena Martynyuk is Visiting Professor in Russian and Slavic Studies. She is an art historian born and raised in Ukraine, with MA in Cultural Studies from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy of Ukraine and PhD in Art History and Theory from Rutgers University (2018). Martynyuk’s research focuses on the emergence of the Ukrainian contemporary art during the Soviet Union’s dissolution and on the Ukrainian postcolonial emancipation formulated in postmodernist terms. She is interested in theories of neo-baroque, unrepresentability, embodied spectatorship and art philosophy in general. Prior to NYU, Martynyuk taught classes on art history and Ukrainian culture at Rutgers University, College of Staten Island, Columbia University and Hunter College. In 2019-2022 she was a Petro Jacyk Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ukrainian Studies in the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. Her most recent exhibition Painting in Excess: Kyiv's Art Revival, 1985-1993 was curated for the Zimmerli Art Museum in 2021 and travelled to Coral Gables Museum, Miami.
She authored and co-authored book chapters on Ukrainian art in books From ‘The Ukraine’ to Ukraine: A contemporary History, 1991-2021, edited by Mykhailo Minakov, Georgiy Kasianov and Matthew Rojansky (2021, together with Oksana Barshynova) and Contemporary Art in Ukraine and the Baltic Countries: Political and Social Perspectives, edited by Svitlana Biedarieva (2021, a single author). Currently, she is working on the Introduction to Ukrainian Contemporary Art as a co-editor with Alla Rosenfeld (forthcoming in Toronto University Press) and on her own monograph on Ukrainian neo-baroque.