OLEK’s art explores sexuality, feminist ideals and the evolution of communication through colors, conceptual exploration and meticulous detail. OLEK consistently pushes the boundaries between fashion, art, craft and public art, fluidly combining the sculptural and the fanciful. With the old fashioned technique of crocheting, she has taken the ephemeral medium of yarn to express everyday occurrences, inspirations and hopes to create a metaphor for the complexity and interconnectedness of our body and psychological processes. OLEK’s bursts of bright colors often mask political and cultural critiques woven into the fibers of her installations, mirroring her respect for artists and writers. She highlights that which already exists in the current time and environment. Her transformation of public spaces and objects reflects cultural evolution, mirroring the public response, from those watching and from those within the art. Born Agata Oleksiak in 1978 in Staszow and raised in industrial Poland, OLEK’s art was a development that took her away from close-minded Silesia, Poland. In 2000, OLEK received a BA in Cultural Studies from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland and relocated to New York City.  OLEK began her career designing sets and costumes for dance companies in NYC.  Since then, she has been exhibited in galleries, museums and public spaces worldwide and featured in numerous publications such as The New YorkTimes, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, TIME Magazine, Vogue Italia, Newsweek/ Daily Beast, Village Voice, Vibe Magazine, Artinfo, PBS, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC. OLEK is the recipient of the Ruth Mellon Award for sculpture in 2004, In Situ Artaq award (France) in 2011, and a grant in 2011 from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) for performance in public space. OLEK’s residencies have included Sculpture Space in 2005, Instituto Sacatar (Brazil) in 2009 and 2016, and AAI-LES in 2010. In 2008, OLEK was the winner of the Apex Art competition, which aired on PBS. In 2010, the artist was commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum of Art for a one-day interactive performance installation. In 2012, OLEK was part of the “40 Under 40: Craft Futures” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery, for which her entire crocheted studio apartment was exhibited. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, including XX: A Moment in Time at the Saatchi Gallery in London, and at Miami Art Basel as part of Women on the Walls at Lynwood Walls, curated by Jeffrey Deitch. In 2005, OLEK exhibited Waterways 2005, an intervention aboard the vaporetto during la Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; and crocheted windows on a boat that crosses between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul for the 9th International Istanbul biennale, Istanbul, Turkey.  In 2009 OLEK exhibited in Museu do Traje e do Têxtil at the Instituto Feminino da Bahia in Salvador, Brazil, in the Heinz Rixdorf MuseumsForum in Paderborn, Germany from 2012-2013, and in Museum Villa Rot in Burgrieden, Germany from 2013-2014. In 2014, OLEK’s work was featured as part of the Brooklyn Artists Ball at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn in 2014 and 2015, New York. In 2014 Han Nefken Collection commissioned her work as part of “The Future of Fashion is Now” exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands.  In 2016, OLEK was commissioned for the installation Our Pink House, at the Avesta Museum in Sweden and the Kerava Museum in Finland