Olga Costa: A Mexican by Choice

The focus of the project is the life of Olga Costa (1913-1993), a Mexican painter of Russian descent. Through a critical examination of the artist’s personal papers, artifacts, art collections, photographs, published and unpublished interviews, I explore to what degree the artist’s identity was shaped by her heritage and early experiences as an outsider. This study will add to our understanding of how bilingualism impacts creativity in visual artists who draw from their life experiences to express multiple cultural affiliations and reconstruct a sense of self in the conditions of displacement and migration. The project combines elements of biographic research, linguistics, and critical theory