Sofya Yechina

Artist Statement

Sometimes the world feels too loud, too bright, too alive to me.

I look at shadows and try to understand what kind of objects could cast them. I have never perceived things as “just things.” Objects, streets, windows, water, empty rooms, and people all carry, for me, their own hidden tension, memory, and inner life.

When I look at an object, I am not interested in reproducing the object itself. I paint the feeling it leaves behind. My work begins in that fragile moment between seeing and sensing — when an ordinary place, a reflection, or a passing figure suddenly becomes emotionally overwhelming. Sometimes I feel that I am not painting cities, landscapes, or people, but the atmosphere that remains between them and myself.

I do not paint the external world in a documentary way. I am interested in what exists between light and memory, between silence and anxiety, between the human being and the space surrounding them. That is why my paintings are built through large fields of color, minimal detail, and the tension between line, emptiness, and presence.

My artistic language was shaped between the Russian avant-garde, academic painting, and German expressionism. Water and rivers have always played an important role in my life. The Danube, the Rhine, and the landscapes of the Balkans and the North became part of my inner artistic geography. For me, Belgrade is not simply a city, but a psychological landscape and a space of memory.

Alongside painting, I write prose and poetic texts. I have never separated image from language. Sometimes I think that my paintings are stories told through color, while my texts are paintings continuing through words.

I see art as an attempt to preserve the ability to feel deeply and to recognize the invisible hidden inside ordinary things.

Biography

Sofya Yechina is a painter and writer based in Belgrade, Serbia. She holds an MA in Fine Arts and works primarily in oil painting, oil pastel, and printmaking. Her artistic language emerges through the intersection of Russian academic painting, the traditions of Renaissance figurative art, and the psychological intensity of Western European — particularly German — expressionism.

Working within a classical studio practice, Yechina develops her paintings through preparatory sketches, tonal studies, and compositional structures before moving toward large-scale works in oil, oil pastel, and printmaking.

Her work is characterized by restrained palettes, psychological tension, and a strong emphasis on silence, space, memory, and the human figure. Water, rivers, and inner landscapes occupy a central place in her visual language, through which she explores themes of displacement, perception, and the relationship between human beings and inhabited space.

Before relocating to Serbia, Yechina received a scholarship in Speyer, Germany, after which she continued to work and exhibit in Germany and Austria. During this period she participated in exhibitions alongside Austrian artists such as Herwig Zens and Linda Waber. Her artistic language was shaped through the intersection of Russian academic painting, Western European expressionism, and long-term work within an international cultural environment.

Alongside her studio practice, Yechina developed a series of live painting and action-painting collaborations with European jazz musicians, creating works in dialogue with improvisational music together with artists such as Richie Beirach and Christian Scheuber.

Since 2016 she has lived and worked in Belgrade, where she has realized numerous solo exhibitions in Serbia and the region, as well as collaborations with cultural institutions including the Goethe-Institut in Belgrade.

Yechina has held over 40 solo exhibitions and participated in approximately 150 group exhibitions internationally. Her works are included in museum and private collections in Serbia, Germany, Austria, Russia, Finland, China, and other countries.

Her work is additionally informed by an ongoing interest in the cultures and poetry of South Asia, including collaborations with Bengali poets such as Mohammad Nurul Huda and Aminur Rahman.

In addition to visual art, Yechina is actively engaged in literature. She is the author of the books Belgrade in Blue (2021) and 30 Paintings of Helma (2023). In 2021, a documentary film about her work — In Search of a Place, directed by Miroslav Bata Petrović — was released.

Selected Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2015 Treiber Gallery, Vienna, Austria
  • 2017 Rathaus Gallery, Schifferstadt, Germany
  • 2018 In Search of a Place — Laufer Art, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2019 Sofija Sofia Sofya Sophia — Laufer Art, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2021 My Eye – Serbia — Gallery ’73, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2021 In Memory of Christopher Scheuber — Sremski Karlovci, Serbia
  • 2021 Other Shores — SKC, Pula, Croatia
  • 2021 Inner Landscapes — Cultural Center of Trebinje, Bosnia & Herzegovina
  • 2022 Inner Landscapes — Banski Dvor, Banja Luka, Bosnia & Herzegovina
  • 2022 Inner Landscapes — Cultural Center of Doboj, Bosnia & Herzegovina
  • 2022 Outside It’s Summer — Army Hall, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2022 Blue Stories — Požarevac, Serbia
  • 2022 My Blue Stories — Dhaka, Bangladesh
  • 2022 Pannonian Reflections — Stara Pazova, Serbia
  • 2022 30 Paintings of Helma — 4SE Marina, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2022 A Novel about London — Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, Serbia
  • 2022 Lichtgestalt — Cultural Center Kovin, Serbia
  • 2022 Schattenfiguren — MTS Hall, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2024 Between the Danube and the Rhine — Goethe-Institut, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2025 Whirlpools of Light — Museum in Smederevo, Serbia
  • 2026 Red Core — Gallery of the Cultural Center of Vrbas, Serbia

Awards & Memberships

Memberships

  • Member of the Association of Writers of Serbia (since 2024)
  • Member of the Association of Artists of Vojvodina (since 2024)
  • Member of ULUPUDS — The Applied Artists and Designers Association of Serbia (since 2025)
  • Member of the Russian Artists' Association (since 2012)
  • Member of the International Association of Art in partnership with UNESCO (since 2012)

Awards

  • 2012 First Prize, Interregional Competition Face (Painting)
  • 2014 First Prize for Original Composition Design, Kazimir Malevich Art Competition
  • 2024 Prize for Best Exhibition of the October Salon in Kovin
  • 2026 Artist of the Year (Arte, Serbia)

Collections

Works by Sofya Yechina are held in museum, institutional, and private collections in Serbia, Germany, Austria, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, France, Croatia, China, and the United States. Including:

  • Belgorod State Museum (Russia)
  • Exhibition Hall of Kazimir Malevich (Russia)
  • Museum of Naive Art Ilijanum (Serbia)
  • Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis Collection (Germany)
  • The State Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia)

Critical Texts

Coming soon.