Sophia Belkin uses dye painting, embroidery, and textile collage to create intricate, dynamic compositions that reference natural processes. She draws inspiration from her own gardening practice as well as from nature at large. Calibrating between intuitive gestural mark-making and the controlled line of the embroidery machine, her textile paintings build layered, multidimensional environments that imply a constant state of regeneration, expansion, and flux. The work explores our inextricable connection to the environment and considers alternative futures for our ecological landscape. Through a lens of sci-fi and abstraction, she imagines how our ecology and our humanity might continue to morph, evolve, and adapt in the face of unprecedented uncertainty.
Sophia Belkin (b. Moscow, Russia) lives and works in Baltimore. Her practice combines dye painting, photography, generative AI, and embroidery to consider themes of ecological change, growth, and mutation. She earned her BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, Rogaland Kunstsenter, NCCA Kronstadt, and the Narva Art Residency in Estonia. Recent solo exhibitions include Slice of Water at Dinner Gallery, New York; Peeling Shadows at Ochi Gallery, Los Angeles; and Ground Swell at Resort Gallery, Baltimore. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum and The Washington Post. Sophia Belkin is represented by HEMPHILL Artworks, Washington, DC.