ABOUT

Katya Tsareva is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in London, UK. Born in Krasnodar, Russia, she holds a Master’s degree in Architecture and Design from Kuban State University and completed the Chelsea Open Studio Short Course at Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK, in 2024.

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Tsareva’s artistic practice, which has evolved at the intersection of installation, video, object-making, and painting, has in recent years become fully focused on the exploration of the human body as both a visual and sensual subject.

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Her watercolor works investigate corporeality as both a form and as a visual expression of identity—alongside the immediate emotional response that such images can provoke. Through hyperrealism, close-up compositions, and transformation, Tsareva aims to create imagery that exists on the edge between attraction and repulsion, intimacy and anonymity. These emotional contradictions form the foundation of her work, in which tension is heightened through a refined visual language and amplified realism. Her current focus lies in depicting the human figure through large-scale watercolors, often in extreme close-up. This medium allows her to explore not only the expressive capabilities of the material, but also her own limits as an artist in recreating and reinterpreting the human form.

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Since her debut solo show in 2012, she has participated in numerous international projects. In 2016, she took part in the parallel program of the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. In 2017, she was included in the In Art list of the Top 100 Young Russian Artists. In 2018, she held a solo exhibition at the Udmurt Republican Museum of Fine Arts, Izhevsk, Russia, supported by the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 2022, she participated in a group exhibition supported by Voices of Culture at the Basel Art Center, Switzerland. In 2024, she presented the two-part solo show The Fleeting Light on Your Folds (The Chapel, Brompton Cemetery, London, UK, and Voskhod Gallery, Basel, Switzerland), the duo show Dawn on Your Skin (London, UK), and took part in the Limburg Biennale (Maastricht, Netherlands) and 1st Ground Biennale (Moscow, Russia).

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Katya Tsareva’s works have been featured in various international publications on contemporary art and beyond. They are part of the collection of the Udmurt Republican Museum of Fine Arts, as well as private collections in London, New York, Basel, Moscow, and other cities around the world.

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