why do you look like that?
sophia kaur
Artist statement: Sophia Kaur primarily works with oil paints to create large naked self portraits to challenge the notion that female bodies are inherently sexual. Sophia is interested in blurring the boundaries between artist, model and viewer and reversing who is being looked. Her figures return a confronting gaze that consistently draws attention, prompting reflection on societies tendency to objectify nudity and disorientating the viewer from the initial, seductive and immersive nature of the work. Sophia Kaur is fascinated by the various selves one moves between in different contexts, conforming and rejecting to certain standards. She depicts her multiple selves intertwining in otherworldly colours that coexist within a liminal space-time, since she exists in-between the binaries set up in Western society. Sophia’s window-like installation construct a portal into another world, which along with a vibrant colour palette and translucent layers invites the viewers to immerse themselves in an unsettling yet captivating eerie familiarity.
Sophia Kaur currently lives in London and is pursuing a Master of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford in 2022, and has exhibited across London and Oxford, including ‘Wilder and Wilder’ at Keble College, at the Oscar Wilde Party at Magdalen college, a duo show with Paul Majek at Magdalen Grove Auditorium, ‘Taste the Difference’ with the ‘Loess Collective’ at Hypha Studios, and ‘No Longer Not Yet’ at Take Courage Gallery. Sophia Kaur won an award in 2020 for the collaborative video ‘MIXER//SHREDDER’ at EMPRES: Art of V(irtual) Noises, Modern Art Oxford.
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