Statement

My practice exists at the intersection of body, memory, and materiality. Through ceramics and mixed media—such as textiles, drawing, and collage—I explore the fragility and complexity of human experience. Clay, with its inherent tension between strength and collapse, is at the core of my work: a material that remembers, breaks, and holds traces of lived experience.

My visual language is permeated by fragments. I conceive fracture not as an end but as the origin of new forms: bodies open, incomplete, reconfigured through composition. My works often evoke ruins, wounds, organs, or geological formations, oscillating between the monstrous and the beautiful. Each piece is a psychological landscape where chaos and order coexist in constant negotiation.

I conceive of artistic practice as a cathartic and speculative act. This process also becomes a means of metabolizing experiences and emotions, translating lived realities into form. Through making, I explore the fragility and absurdity of life, often employing irony and humor as lenses for understanding and resistance.

I work intuitively and embrace accidents, allowing materials to speak, deform, and collapse. I do not impose shapes upon them but rather accompany their transformations. Within this process, emotional narratives emerge: vulnerability, resilience, intimacy, and the quiet labor of repair.

My sculptures do not seek completeness or perfection. They are bodies in transit—active ruins—that persist in their mutation, continuing to speak from their deterioration.

Sofia Donovan