Karina Akopyan is a London-based interdisciplinary artist with Armenian-Russian background. Her formal training was in illustration, though she has since developed work into painting and wearable textile sculptures. Her works are abundant with symbolism and narrative, and each displays a careful consideration of the medium in which they exist. In the illustration and visualisation of these narratives, various characters and subjects are interwoven and form part of a shared collective consciousness. Her work reacts with her own family history: Karina’s fascination for traditional stories and their symbols, folk tales, and religious Orthodox mysticism. Narration is both a conceptual and stylistic device. In her paintings and illustrations, Karina draws complex storylines featuring numerous characters, performing in many vignettes all at once. Each subject is afforded a generous focus on the body, and corporeality is central in every form of the work, but especially so in the wearable sculptures, where the piece figures itself around the negative space of the body. Her inspirational lineage and personal heritage serve as filters to interpret core aspects of life – gender, sexuality, and identity – and contrast their stereotypical socialisation. The sexual, in particular, becomes a vehicle to celebrate the sensual, in its multiplicity, and explore the routes desire, the most human of emotions, takes to get satisfied, or to evolve into a sophisticatedly precise aim. Akopyan’s work has been featured internationally, at a solo exhibition at The Truman Brewery in London, 2016; and in selected group shows in Yerevan (2024), Taipei (2022), Brussels (2020–21), and in London at Saatchi Gallery (2019) and Horse Hospital (2019).

She/Her

@karinaakopyan_

Photo by Anthony Lycett