Margarita Korol is an urban pop artist

with Chicago as base camp. The city took her in under refugee status in 1988 from the Soviet Union (now the Ukraine), providing for many worlds of influence on her person and art. After living in Prague, another Urban Palimpsest, her brilliantly-colored paintings have taken a fresh stroke to urbanity through portrayals of icons that incite exciting vibes in city dwellers.

Her newest exhibit, IMMIGRATING CITY, puts Chicago in the limelight along with many of its notable icons: The El, Lake Michigan, the city’s diversity, and even biking culture.

The exhibit's namesake painting from 2007 embodies the overall series' themes. Immigrating City recognizes Chicago immigrants from outside and inside the city. The blooming flower represents individuals of all backgrounds and color composing an agglomeration of neighborhoods that equal Chicago, resulting in a flowering of varied cultural experiences. Meanwhile, the inner-city pioneer theme is represented in the flower's stems, the CTA lines, where thousands of Chicagoans create their very own exoduses to work, school and pleasure throughout the gargantuan metropolis. East, which the artist argues trumps all other cardinal directions in Chicago, is up. And, variations in blues remind that on any given day, the lake takes on a different hue than days before.

Margarita Korol is an urban pop artist because urbanity equals life, and living is to express one’s happiness. The artist thanks her family for breaking out of a totalitarian culture that killed creativity and for giving her art a future.