Sofiia Yesakova (UA)
Sofiia Yesakova (b. 1998) lives and works in Berlin. She is a current participant in the Berlin postgraduate Program Goldrausch Künstlerinnen. Sofiia is also a member of Frontviews at HAUNT Berlin. Central to her artistic practice is the research into the increasing role of information in regulating human behaviour, total control, as well as the rapid adaptation to any situation and the reduction of everything to statistics. A search for truth in a stream of interference. Sofiia has chosen lifeless language as an alternative form of artistic narrative - a diagram or an engineering-like schematic drawing. Bureaucratically consistent, dry and lifeless. She uses language of minimalism, but also focuses on expressing thoughts and emotions, reflecting, and conveying the atmosphere, that is, what minimalism has tried to deny and possibly suppress. For Sofiia, the balance between emotionality and rationality is important (the direction that prefers the mind to the senses in cognition, turns away from sensory reality). Now a main material for the artist is gesso, wood and a lot of layers of gelatine. To create works, she uses different techniques such as woodcarving, icon painting, multi-layered approach, blueprint-like drawings and also installation designed specifically for certain spaces with an attitude of respect for architecture.
The contradictory feelings of the elegance of the refined forms of the wooden planks with their oppressive contextual part is an important part of understanding her works. The element of absence is the result of deliberately rejecting the figurative images and pieces we understand. Many of the works with drawings are also resembling frescoes in a temple, part of the wall of which seems to have been removed from and moved into the gallery space. There is another connection to the religious theme. An important contextual support is the iconology Sofiia uses to communicate with the viewer, as well as the multi-layered complexity of our history and symbolism.
Partner: IZOLYATSIA, Kyiv, Ukraine
Photo (c) the artist
