fellows

Photo by: Christa Holka

Alisa Oleva is a walking artist based in London. Her practice unfolds within the spaces and streets of the city, exploring the politics of public space, how the city moves and how we move it, urban choreography and urban archaeology, traces and surfaces, borders and inventories, intervals and silences, passages and cracks. Her projects have taken the form of one-to-one and collective performances, walking scores, personal and intimate encounters, gatherings, parkour sessions, walkshops, soundwalks, and audiowalks.

Alisa holds a BA and MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and an MA in Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently undertaking a fully funded practice-based PhD at the University of East London. She has worked with various places and communities, including Dnipro, Mariupol, Belgrade, Minsk, Berlin, Felixstowe, Leeds, Dudlange, La Sauvage, Brussels, Taoyuan, and others. In 2023, she was the recipient of an Another Route bursary and is currently leading a series of monthly art walks in East London, commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

Artist's webpage and Instagram.

Buildhollywood collaboration 

Walking Home

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1. WALK, series of monthly urban art walks commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD, London, 2024, photo by: Deacon Lui; 2. WALK, series of monthly urban art walks commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD, London, 2024, photo by; Zack McGuinness; 3. WALK, series of monthly urban art walks commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD, London, 2024, photo by BUILDHOLLYWOOD; 4. Sounds Like Home, walking and listening performance, Leeds-Kamianske-Santiago, 2024, photo by: Lizzie Coombes; 5. Research residency, commissioned by Izolyatsia and hosted by Platform TU, Mariupol, 2019, photo by: Maria Pronina; 6. Walking lab, commissioned by Artsvit, Dnipro, 2018, photo by: Vita Popova; 7. Repeat, walking performance, part of Work Hard Play Hard, Minsk, photo by: Dzina Zhuk; 8. The Demolition Project, durational installation, London, 2018, photo by: Rocia Chacon; 9. Walking Through, art residency, installation as part of Moving Like a Resident exhibition-sharing, Matsu New Artist Village, Taiwan, 2024; 10. Cities of the Night, exhibition, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 2022, photo by: Timothy Maxymenko
Artist statement

Why walking? My impulse to walk stems from my experience of migration, which pushed me out of precarious housing conditions and led me to search for connection and a relationship with a new city through walking it. Over time, it developed into a walking art practice, in which I walk and invite others to walk with me, using walking as a methodology and practice to spark conversations, explore our connection to the everyday, question the politics of public space, and nurture a more sense of belonging and connection to land and place. 

I walk one-to-one with both strangers and friends. I also walk with big groups and small groups. I have organised various simultaneous walks across distances, across places, and across borders. 

Together with others who have also experienced migration, I explore how walking can become a way of home-finding - what routes we weave in our new homes, and what paths from our previous homes we carry with us. I also use counter-mapping as a way to walk the routes we remember but can no longer access.

I often walk at night, exploring the urban nightscape and how the city transforms in darkness. I’m interested in how the experience of walking at night differs for different bodies in different locations. 

In my work as a walking artist, walking is both the medium, the material, and the practice, while the streets, cities, parks, forests, and other kinds of places are both the site and my collaborators. 

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