An art historian and curator, she specializes in history and theory of photography and modern and contemporary art. Her research interests include the intersection of photography and science—especially issues of representation and cognition – the materiality of photographic processes, and the history of Ukrainian art, particularly during the Soviet period.

She works as a curator and director of academic publishing at the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography and holds a postdoctoral position at the University of Oxford where she defended her PhD on the invention of photography and particularly the use of plant dyes in the development of photographic polychromy. Previously, Chervonik worked as a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA), Izolyatsia: Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Donetsk, Ukraine), Videonale: Festival of Video Art at Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany), and the Spencer Museum of Art (Kansas, USA).

In her current research project, Olena investigates two Ukrainian manifestations of the Worker Photography Movement (1929-1939): the photographic journal Foto dlia Vsikh, published in Kharkiv between 1928 and 1931, and the First National Exhibition of Worker Photography, held at the City Industry Museum in Lviv in 1936. Together, these two cases – a periodical and an exhibition – illustrate both the public dimensions and the regional breadth of the movement. 

During the residency at the Center for Urban History, she plans to focus on archival materials related to the latter event, specifically the circumstances of its organization, its reception in the press, and its possible impact on the local art scene and society at large.