Katya Muromtseva

Katya Muromtseva is a visual artist whose work explores personal and collective memory through painting, installation, video, and socially engaged practice. Drawing on her background in philosophy and stage design, she develops lyrical and conceptually driven projects that investigate the ways histories are documented, transmitted, and imagined.

Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions and projects at M HKA (Antwerp), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), Moscow Museum of Modern Art, XL Gallery, Art Front Gallery, and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, among others. She has participated in residencies at WHW Akademija (Zagreb), Garage Studios & Residencies (Moscow), and Cornerstone Studios (New York City).

Muromtseva was a recipient of the Present Continuous program at M HKA, the Innovation Prize for Contemporary Art (2020), and a Fulbright Fellowship (2020–2022). In 2020, she was included in Forbes Russia's 30 Under 30 list. Her work has been featured in Artforum, The Economist, The New York Times, The World, and Tokyo Art Beat, among other publications.

She received an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and is based in Harlem, New York.

Artist statement
My practice focuses on large-scale paintings, video, and shadow installations that emerge from historical contradictions. Interviews with people from different social backgrounds are the starting point for many of my works. I am interested in how personal experience becomes legible as history, and how images can offer alternative ways of understanding events usually described through dominant historical narratives. I explore how history is not simply represented through images, but continuously constructed and transformed through them.

Through my practice, I search for new forms of existence within hierarchical social and cultural systems. I am interested in narratives where scholarly research and artistic imagination overlap. I am interested in the possibility of art as a form of solidarity, particularly in times of political uncertainty and displacement. Rather than relying on direct political gestures, I explore how empathy can become embedded in artistic forms through collaboration and sustained engagement with individuals and communities.

Contacts:
ekaterinamuromtseva@gmail.com

IG: katya_muromtseva