Artist Bio
AIVA STOROSTNIEKA, b. 1989
Glasgow School of Art, Painting and Printmaking 2020
Aiva was born in 1989 in Latvia, at the time still part of the Soviet Union block. City districts and villages, landscapes of grim socialist modernism, stood in sharp contrast against the impressive Art Nouveau architecture in Riga where she trained as an architectural technician. The built environment has significantly shaped Aiva’s development as an artist. The influence of brutalist architecture is visible in her earlier artworks, although the questionably comforting lack of colour, one of the more noticeable features of her art, is present throughout.
In 2011, following the spirit of adventure, Aiva moved to Scotland, Edinburgh where she worked with social enterprise The New Earth Works and was commissioned to collaborate for LIFE evolved, an interactive multimedia show, held in Edinburgh’s Summerhall in 2015. Since then, Aiva has been pursuing higher education in Fine Art and in 2017 moved to Glasgow to study Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art.
Focusing on printmaking and spatial constructions, Aiva’s work is situated in the framework of conceptual art. Her main interest is understanding the aspects of reality that form a lived experience. Over time, her focus has shifted from the factuality of the immediate environment to metaphysical structures of the mind. However, all this is part of the reality as a unity of multitude. Inspired by philosophy and sense of discovery, Aiva’s work investigates abstract ideas through intuitive making.
During the final year of her Bachelor degree, as a co-founder and committee member of SaltSpace Co-operative CIC, Aiva worked along with a team of young artists to set up three spaces in Glasgow to act as a stepping platform for new art graduates. She graduated with First-Class Honours from Glasgow School of Art during the Covid-19 pandemic and joined the ‘sad grads 2020’ with the first-ever degree show online.
Glasgow School of Art, Painting and Printmaking 2020
Aiva was born in 1989 in Latvia, at the time still part of the Soviet Union block. City districts and villages, landscapes of grim socialist modernism, stood in sharp contrast against the impressive Art Nouveau architecture in Riga where she trained as an architectural technician. The built environment has significantly shaped Aiva’s development as an artist. The influence of brutalist architecture is visible in her earlier artworks, although the questionably comforting lack of colour, one of the more noticeable features of her art, is present throughout.
In 2011, following the spirit of adventure, Aiva moved to Scotland, Edinburgh where she worked with social enterprise The New Earth Works and was commissioned to collaborate for LIFE evolved, an interactive multimedia show, held in Edinburgh’s Summerhall in 2015. Since then, Aiva has been pursuing higher education in Fine Art and in 2017 moved to Glasgow to study Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art.
Focusing on printmaking and spatial constructions, Aiva’s work is situated in the framework of conceptual art. Her main interest is understanding the aspects of reality that form a lived experience. Over time, her focus has shifted from the factuality of the immediate environment to metaphysical structures of the mind. However, all this is part of the reality as a unity of multitude. Inspired by philosophy and sense of discovery, Aiva’s work investigates abstract ideas through intuitive making.
During the final year of her Bachelor degree, as a co-founder and committee member of SaltSpace Co-operative CIC, Aiva worked along with a team of young artists to set up three spaces in Glasgow to act as a stepping platform for new art graduates. She graduated with First-Class Honours from Glasgow School of Art during the Covid-19 pandemic and joined the ‘sad grads 2020’ with the first-ever degree show online.
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