Ksenia Yurkova
Ksenia Yurkova (b. 1984, Leningrad) is an artist, curator, and researcher. Her leading artistic media is text, photography, video, and installation. The main focus of her interest was communication and language: the varieties of its substance, the possibility of conversion, mythological aspect, stereotyping (personal and political identification), problems of memory, attitudes, and reliance. Lately, the artist researches the phenomenon of affect in its autonomous bodily emanation; in personal and political registers.
Ksenia Yurkova is an artist, curator, and researcher living in Austria. She considers her leading artistic media to be text, photography, video, and installation. Yurkova started her practice as a researcher in the field of political and communication theory. The main focus of her interest for a long time was communication and language: the varieties of its substance, the possibility of conversion, its mythological aspect, stereotyping (the question of personal and political identification), problems of memory, attitudes, and reliance. Lately, the artist is researching the phenomenon of affect in its autonomous bodily emanation; in its personal and political registers. She focuses upon how a stage of individual perception, to which one can relate memory, traumatic recollection, and problems of identity construction, transforms itself into affects of the political body. Coming a long way from political and cultural journalism, through organising and curating cultural and art events, Ksenia settled in individual artistic and research practice, which allows the vital critical distance for observation and work with contemporary issues.
Her approach is based on methods of language appropriation, over-affirmation, self-reflection, and self-criticism through ironic components inevitably added to the most pressing matters. Nonetheless, Ksenia didn't give up socially engaged practice and launched a festival-laboratory
Suoja/ Shelter in Finland, and an artist-in-residence research program
InSilo in Austria. Ksenia Yurkova has taken part in numerous shows and festivals worldwide, to mention Photoireland Festival21
; Backlight Festival
’20; Athens Photo Festival
’19, ’17, ’15
; Krakow Photo Month ’19; Grandprix Fotofestival ’15; a screening at Documenta@15; three times has been nominated to Kuryohin Prize, was awarded stipends from the Austrian Ministry of Culture and Sport, and by the Federal State of Lower Austria; has released several artist books. Her works are in public and private collections worldwide, mainly in Russia, Germany, France, Finland, and Austria. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.