Hate it or love it, it’s hard to stay indifferent to Agata Oleksiak’s crocheted art. Also known as Olek, the Polish-born, New-York-based conceptual artist uses crochet to cover everything around her. And we mean everything! From bicycles to buildings, a children’s rickshaw to cars, her installations are truly something else.
Beginning as a street artist she soon exhibited her works around the world, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, France, Italy, Poland, and Costa Rica (among others). Using her art as a call for action, she doesn’t shy away from politics or activism and is an avid supporter of women’s rights, equality, and freedom of expression.
“When I was a little girl, there was nothing in the department stores,” she recalled her love story with crochet in an interview with Spear’s Magazine.
“As a kid I learned to crochet a little. It was something to do when I was growing up; we had to reinvent what we had, to make something out of it. I spent a whole week collecting the tin caps from the milk we got every day to make art. I would collect the shiny paper when we had chocolate and make something out of it. I really hate it when artists say, ‘I can’t work because I don’t have materials.’ Find your own materials! Find your own!”
“It wasn’t my dream to be an artist,” she admitted. “My dream was to have a different life. In Poland I wouldn’t have the chance to have my own life. By moving here I could write my own life, the story that I want to have.”
Take a look at some of her incredible artwork.
