STUDIO178

Katya Muromtseva is Cornerstone Studios' 2024-25 Studio178 Artist in Residence. 

Katya Muromtseva is visual artist with a background in philosophy and stage design, whose lyrical-conceptual work investigates personal and collective memory through imaginative forms of documentation. She has had solo exhibitions at the M HKA Museum, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, XL Gallery, Art Front Gallery, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial among others. She was a resident at WHW Academy in Zagreb and at Garage Studios & Art Residencies Moscow. She was a winner of the Present Continuous program of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA). She has received the “Innovation” contemporary art prize in 2020 and Fulbright fellowship in 2020-2022. She was listed in Forbes Russia "30 under 30" in 2020. Her exhibitions and individual works were covered by ArtForum, The Economist, The New York Times, The World, TokyoArtBeat among others. Currently she is teaching at VCU Arts School in the US.

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.

Website: https://www.muromtseva.art