Kristina Õllek (1989) is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. She is working in the field of photography, video and installation, with a focus on investigating representational processes, geological matter, aquatic ecosystems, and the human-made environment. In her practice, she uses a research-based approach, but within she also incorporates her own fictitious and speculative perspectives. With her work, she raises questions around the relationship between natural and synthetic, original and copy, and understandings of materiality by obtaining a new and reconsidered meaning. She is interested in stretching out the boundaries of what we can see and use as an image and space, especially now in the age of rapidly developing and highly manipulative technology. Within her recent projects she has been focusing on marine habitat and the notion of new technologies, including the geopolitical and ecological conditions associated with them. Her work is often site-sensitive and analyses the location and the format of exhibition-making, questioning the display and the politics of installation in a perspective of a historical museum to an online space and future archeology.

Kristina Õllek graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts (BA 2013, MA 2016; in the Photography Department, Fine Arts). She has complemented her studies in Berlin at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee (2012) and in Rotterdam at Piet Zwart Institute (2016). Õllek has won the Estonian Academy of Arts Young Artist Prize 2013 (BA) and 2016 (MA). Between 2013-2018 she was the co-founder and member of artist-run space Rundum. In 2019, she received the Art Proof Production Grant.

Kristina Õllek’s works have been shown in various international group and solo exhibitions; including at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo), Zeppelin Museum (Friedrichshafen), A Tale of A Tub (Rotterdam), Laurel Project Space (Amsterdam), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), Screen City Biennial (Stavanger), Fotomuseum Winterthur, Titanic gallery (Turku), KUMU (Tallinn), EKKM (Tallinn), Tallinn Art Hall, Draakoni & Hobusepea gallery (Tallinn), ISSP gallery (Riga), Riga Photography Biennial, Zuzeum (Riga), Benaki Museum (Athens), Snehta Residency (Athens), Coherent (Brussels). Her works belong to several collections (e.g Estonian Art Museum, Estonia; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; European Central Bank art collection, Germany; private collections).