Sonya Bogdanova
Education:
2021, MFA, Studio Arts, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL
2012, BFA, Painting, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL
Bio:
Born in Moscow (1991), Bogdanova is a Chicago-based artist and professor. She has exhibited nationally and internationally; selected exhibitions include Random Access Gallery (Syracuse), the Chicago Cultural Center, Terrain Exhibitions (Chicago), Ignition Projects (Chicago), Co-Prosperity Sphere (Chicago), Flatland (Chicago), and Sylvia Rivera Law Project (New York). She was an artist-in-residence at Holly & the Neighbors in 2021 and at Jiwar Foundation in Barcelona in 2015. Bogdanova holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She teaches ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, painting at UIC, and elementary school arts for Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). She is a member of GROUPLOVE, a performance and music collective in Chicago.
Artist Statement:
Thinking in terms of the weird and the eerie¹, Sonya Bogdanova is engrossed with making work that should be secret. She uses sculpture and performance to talk about parapolitics, violence, labor, and architecture. Working across media, Bogdanova combines ceramics with industrial materials to imbue tangible objects with perversity. This practice attempts to show the unshowable or long forgotten. Through performance, Bogdanova objectifies her body through violent play. Centered on the desire for another way out, she explores how the path through horror could enable direct action. At present, Bogdanova is making a body of work on the temporal echo of the atomic bomb.
