Sofiia Yesakova (b. 1998) lives and works in Berlin. She is currently participating in the Berlin postgraduate program Goldrausch Künstlerinnen. Yesakova is a member of Frontviews at HAUNT Berlin, where she is also part of the curatorial board.
Central to Yesakova’s artistic practice is the research into the increasing role of information in regulating and controlling human behaviour – being able as it is to rapidly adapt to any situation and reduce everything to statistics. A search for truth in a stream of interference.
Yesakova uses diagrams or engineering-like schematic drawings to arrive at an alternative form of artistic narrative – bureaucratically consistent, dry and lifeless. She often refers to theoretical concepts like Gilles Deleuze’s layering approach of thinking, Jacques Lacan’s analysis of society’s structures and Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical concepts.
In recent years, Yesakova has been inspired by the idea of ciphering and creating a certain structure of visual storytelling, often inspired by engineering drawings. Using spatial interventions in order to create certain emotions and sensations, she deals with the intertwining of reality and illusion, the boundary between the emotional and the rational, or the the tension between softness and hardness.
In Yesakova’s work, the symbolism and imagery of the Renaissance may intersect with rigid constructivist forms, and plans and drawings from concentration camps contrast with the clean idiom of minimalism. A lot of her works make reference to the formerly religious context of art. They use iconology or resemble frescoes from a temple – like a part of a wall taken from its original context and moved into the gallery space. Working with materials like gesso, wood and layers of gelatine, Yesakova uses different techniques such as woodcarving, icon painting, blueprint-like drawings and site-specific installations in regard to the history of the place and with respect for its architecture.
Sofiia Yesakova (b. 1998) lives and works in Berlin. She is currently participating in the Berlin postgraduate program Goldrausch Künstlerinnen. Yesakova is a member of Frontviews at HAUNT Berlin, where she is also part of the curatorial board.
Central to Yesakova’s artistic practice is the research into the increasing role of information in regulating and controlling human behaviour – being able as it is to rapidly adapt to any situation and reduce everything to statistics. A search for truth in a stream of interference.
Yesakova uses diagrams or engineering-like schematic drawings to arrive at an alternative form of artistic narrative – bureaucratically consistent, dry and lifeless. She often refers to theoretical concepts like Gilles Deleuze’s layering approach of thinking, Jacques Lacan’s analysis of society’s structures and Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical concepts.
In recent years, Yesakova has been inspired by the idea of ciphering and creating a certain structure of visual storytelling, often inspired by engineering drawings. Using spatial interventions in order to create certain emotions and sensations, she deals with the intertwining of reality and illusion, the boundary between the emotional and the rational, or the the tension between softness and hardness.
In Yesakova’s work, the symbolism and imagery of the Renaissance may intersect with rigid constructivist forms, and plans and drawings from concentration camps contrast with the clean idiom of minimalism. A lot of her works make reference to the formerly religious context of art. They use iconology or resemble frescoes from a temple – like a part of a wall taken from its original context and moved into the gallery space. Working with materials like gesso, wood and layers of gelatine, Yesakova uses different techniques such as woodcarving, icon painting, blueprint-like drawings and site-specific installations in regard to the history of the place and with respect for its architecture.