Ayla Dmyterko (b.1988)

One of a growing number of Regina contemporary artists to exhibit her work internationally, Ayla Dmyterko began her career as a painter. She soon expanded her practice to include the moving image, sculpture, and installation—often in combination—to examine contemporary discourse surrounding patriarchy, colonialism, environmentalism, and late-stage capitalism, particularly in relation to her own experience of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. While studying with David Garneau (b.1962) at the University of Regina, Dmyterko embraced the idea that an artist’s practice can change from project to project and is most successful “when it remains honest to an idea rather particular style or even medium.”  This ethos continues to guide her creative work.

Dmyterko began experimenting with video in 2020 while attending the Glasgow School of Art, producing Solastalgic Soliloquy that year. The work was filmed at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Regina, in Białowieża Forest in Poland, as well as at locations in Glasgow and Berlin. It was first shown as part of Ritual & Lore, an exhibition on themes of folklore and traditional knowledge held at the Art Gallery of Regina. The video utilizes traditional dance to convey the erosion of folkloric traditions through separation from their original environments—as Dmyterko states, “generational slippage as my muscle memory fails and fragments.”  Embracing the idea that “moving image is more accessible than painting because it can travel digitally and be screened in multiple places at once,”  Dmyterko produced two additional video works, Rite of Return, 2021, and On Volya: Filling in the Frescoes, 2023.

Dmyterko was born in Ituna, Saskatchewan, a rural community northeast of Regina. Her ancestors were part of a large wave of Ukrainians who immigrated to Saskatchewan starting in the late nineteenth century as part of Canada’s project of settling the West. She grew up in Regina, immersed in Ukrainian customs and rituals, including traditional dance. Dmyterko’s first solo exhibition, The Tale Began with a Beet (It Must End with the Devil), held at Montreal’s Projet Pangée in 2015, included the series of paintings The Dead Leave Us Starving with Mouths Full of Love, which drew on her experience as a third-generation immigrant.

After completing a master’s degree in Glasgow, in 2020, she presented Vyshyvani Kazky, Embroidered Stories at Zalucky Contemporary in Toronto, an exhibition that referenced her ancestors’ path from the Carpathian Mountains to the Canadian Prairies. One component of that project was Future Projections, 2018, digital images made from archival family photographs projected onto surviving buildings on the original homestead. Another was Peasants Under Glass, 2020, photographs depicting fragments of embroidered Ukrainian dance costumes.

Dmyterko’s work was exhibited at Pangée for a second time in 2023. One of the works in that exhibition, A Sieve for the Sun, 2023, was purchased for the permanent collection of SK Arts. Her work continues to be shown abroad, most recently in a solo exhibition presented in late 2025 at Alma Pearl in London, England.