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
Through my practice I am looking for the new forms of existence within the hierarchical social and cultural systems of society. I am interested in the narrative where scholarly and artistic imagination overlap. I imagine the possibility to renew historical narratives, to reconfigure methods of exhibition display, to share the means of production with other artists, the possibility of actual solidarity. I’m asking myself how to be a political artist under authoritarian governments without direct aggressive gestures but instead with a social empathy embedded in painterly and sculptural form through constant interaction with individuals and communities. My primary artistic focus is on large-scale paintings, videos and shadow installations that are based on historical contradictions. The interviews with representatives of various social groups are the starting point for most of my works.

Contacts:
ekaterinamuromtseva@gmail.com

IG: katya_muromtseva