Things I Tried to Keep is a spatially expansive assemblage of existing and newly produced works and personal belongings that come together in a dense, multilayered mise en scène. The exhibition is not conceived as a classical presentation of works, but as a temporary archive, storage, or depot that highlights an in-between state hovering between structure and disorientation. It is also part of the conference possessed, centering on the interplay between obsession and possession.

The artist treats her own works as if they were foreign material: stacking, wedging, knotting them, pushing them into corners, allowing some to become partially inaccessible. The exhibition space becomes a place in progress, suspended halfway between warehouse and display, where things are kept, displaced, and reconfigured. The project reflects on archiving, memory, and the quiet failure of order, asking what lingers in a practice over time and what resists being resolved. It is an attempt to take the incidental, the overlooked, and the unfinished seriously, as material, as atmosphere, and as part of an open, continually shifting artistic process.

Olga Shcheblykina is a Vienna-based artist whose practice moves between painting, sculpture, and installation. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Illustration from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK and is currently pursuing a diploma at the University of Art and Design Linz.