Inga Loyeva was born in Odessa, Ukraine and lived there until age ten, when her parents fled the disintegration of the Soviet Union as refugees to the United States. Fascinated with political clashes, she traveled to Maidan in Kyiv at end of 2013 when the global zeitgeist of civil disobedience and revolt fell upon Ukraine. Here she painted scenes from Ukranian protest.
Loyeva interviewed, photographed and empathized with the protestors of EuroMaidan while partaking in various rituals culminating on the square. She says, “My work does not attempt to find a single objective truth about this geopolitical struggle but rather add a new data point to the constellation of perspectives on the Ukrainian identity crisis and media spectacle in the form of my own artistic truth.”
Since moving to San Francisco, she began a new series of paintings to celebrate love and connection. She paints lovers entangled in embrace. She’s interested in diversifying Western canons of what love looks like and am beginning to paint inter-racial, non-hetero-normative couples.