Katya Granova artist

Katya Granova artist Katya Granova is an artist living in London, working with painting and performance

Bending Over Grandma, 155 × 185 cm, oil on canvas, 2025This work is deeply personal to me.I completed it not long after ...
01/06/2026

Bending Over Grandma, 155 × 185 cm, oil on canvas, 2025

This work is deeply personal to me.

I completed it not long after my grandmother, Swetlana, died in July 2025. It is based on a photograph where she is maybe 25, having a picnic somewhere with my grandfather and a friend. She is bending over, perhaps to take and peel a fruit or something like that, in the middle of a conversation. It is a very ephemeral moment of life, maybe a second before they all turned toward the sound of the camera.

My grandmother’s death was, and still is, a very big loss for me, especially considering that I was very far away when it happened. My grandma was a very unusual and complex person, and our relationship was never easy. She was an extremely gifted person, a prodigy who seemed perfect at everything, who wrote her doctoral thesis in three months while caring for a newborn. Several people who knew her when she was young told me that she would have achieved far more than my grandfather if they had been asked to place a bet on one of them, and my grandfather was a star surgeon and scientist.

Unfortunately, it is usually women who compromise.

But being this incredibly talented was also her curse. She was so sure that she knew better than anyone else what people should do that she tried to keep control. She was ready to give everything for her child and grandchild, except the freedom to make their own choices and mistakes. As a child, I had to fight for my freedom from a very early age.

But my grandparents, especially together, gave me immeasurable amounts of love. We did so many creative and adventurous things together. We would stage dances, sing songs, go down slopes and fall over, and my grandma would create fun adventure stories out of anything. No one was ever upset that I painted on the wallpaper, and both of them were always telling me that I was clever, beautiful, and talented. I would probably have become a very spoiled child if I had been raised exclusively by them, but I had many different adults with different agendas around me.

This love will always stay with me.

But I never met them, or her, when they were young.

(More in the comments)

Beach scene, 2025, 220*170cmOil on canvas
20/05/2026

Beach scene, 2025, 220*170cm
Oil on canvas

Excited to share that my summer studio with LIA was covered by Hyperallergic . This studio was truly one of the best I’v...
14/04/2026

Excited to share that my summer studio with LIA was covered by Hyperallergic . This studio was truly one of the best I’ve ever had!

I love this section covering artist studios—we mostly see finished work, but most of the magic happens there, where you’re standing in front of an endless sea of possibilities to be accomplished on canvas. You navigate it entirely on your own—scared and excited, sometimes lost and doubting, sometimes following an easy, breathtaking flow.

Party from the 70s, 60×85cm, oil on canvas, 2026One more painting I made in the residency Monte da JaponicaThis is my se...
12/04/2026

Party from the 70s, 60×85cm, oil on canvas, 2026

One more painting I made in the residency Monte da Japonica
This is my second work on the same photograph of my granddad on a party, giving a toast or telling a story. This photograph is quite dear for me.

Really beautiful article by is up in Plinth magazine I feel very honoured. Thank you so much Lydia for this deep and th...
08/04/2026

Really beautiful article by is up in Plinth magazine
I feel very honoured. Thank you so much Lydia for this deep and thoughtful piece of writing and thank you Plinth for publishing. That means a lot t me

Last summer while in LIA residency I got access to Spinnerei Factory photographic archive. If you are not from Leipzig, ...
27/03/2026

Last summer while in LIA residency I got access to Spinnerei Factory photographic archive. If you are not from Leipzig, Spinnerei was a massive yarn factory, eventually turned into the main art cluster of Leipzig. Its history spans through a century, it has witnessed First World War, the rise and fall of N**i power, 40 years of Soviet power and Stasi networks, the unification of Germany, and many other things. I was particularly interested in GDR times - as a person born in USSR, I was very interested in differences and similarities between USSR and GDR, so I particularly looked for the photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s. The majority of these archival images served a clear propaganda function, aiming to convince the viewer what a happy life the average factory workers had in the GDR. Yet on closer look, in the corners and backgrounds of friendly workers helping each other or jubilee gatherings, a more complex reality appears. Someone drinks liquor from a bottle, a child cries, and someone hugs quite sexually - none of that was meant to be seen, yet it slipped into the frame accidentally.

I took those one or two square centimeters of black and white photographs, featuring some deviation of at least partially orchestrated scenes, and turned them into massive two or three meter colorful paintings. I wanted to magnify those barely visible parts of the archival image to life size, so I can enter these scenes through open gestures and vivid colours, as portals into the complicated history of Spinnerei. Born in the USSR, where such imagery was widespread, I grew up with a particular filter of suspicion towards any happy factory life imagery, so I was aiming to resist the logic of an autocratic propaganda by bringing everyday, quiet acts of rebellion back into focus, making the unnoticed big and noticeable. I see those non-fitting people as quiet rebels, living their true, more complex and diverse lives under the autocratic pressure, even if their whole rebellion is just hugging, crying, drinking, being angry, pi**ed or tired, and not putting effort to be a part of a state version of reality.

Come and see how it worked out.
Opening on Friday, 3rd, 19-22

I’m very pleased. Thank you and As someone who once was in a jury herself, I know very well that you should not anyhow...
25/03/2026

I’m very pleased. Thank you and

As someone who once was in a jury herself, I know very well that you should not anyhow connect your self esteem as an artist to winning or not winning any prizes, because there are always so many considerations. But - I am doing my best to hold my slavic stare and inborn cynicism for some time and actually celebrate this:)

Believe it or not:) Very happy with this award, especially minding 16000 applications they received. To be honest as som...
25/03/2026

Believe it or not:) Very happy with this award, especially minding 16000 applications they received. To be honest as someone who was in a jury I know that you should never base your self esteem of the artist on prizes- won or not won, but I'll remove my professional Slavic stare and cynicism for today and just celebrate:)

Big news, I’m having my first solo show in Leipzig.The show will feature my works related to the Spinnerei factory and i...
23/03/2026

Big news, I’m having my first solo show in Leipzig.

The show will feature my works related to the Spinnerei factory and its history, and how those slightly or intensely propagandistic images of a happy workers’ life in GDR times can tell something about real humans and their stories from this very particular time.

The intimate space of Paula Pirania in Plagwitz gives a chance to stay with those context, insert yourself into the history, witnessed by these unknown people, and connect to my painterly response to their moments of life.

Opening and drinks 3 April 19.00–22.00
Exhibition runs 4–5 April 14.00–20.00

All welcome.

⸻

Große Neuigkeiten, ich habe meine erste Einzelausstellung in Leipzig.

Die Ausstellung zeigt meine Arbeiten zur Spinnerei und ihrer Geschichte und fragt, wie diese leicht oder stark propagandistischen Bilder eines glücklichen Arbeiterlebens in DDR-Zeiten etwas über reale Menschen und ihre Geschichten aus einer ganz bestimmten Zeit erzählen können.

Der intime Raum von Paula Pirania in Plagwitz gibt die Möglichkeit, bei diesem Kontext zu verweilen, sich in diese Geschichte hineinzuversetzen, die von diesen unbekannten Menschen getragen wird, und sich mit meiner malerischen Auseinandersetzung mit ihren Lebensmomenten zu verbinden.

Eröffnung und Drinks 3. April 19.00–22.00
Ausstellung 4.–5. April 14.00–20.00

Alle sind willkommen.

For the first time in my practice, I connected painting and dance — because for me, this is essentially the same thing. ...
18/03/2026

For the first time in my practice, I connected painting and dance — because for me, this is essentially the same thing. The only difference is that painting is a cemented, frozen movement, and dance is a time-spread medium, but both are perceived through movement too — tiny little movements of the eyes. So, via dancing or via showing paintings, we invite the viewer to enter a sensual, bodily interaction — their eye movements and our body movements correspond.

My painting is my bodily reaction to the old photograph; my dance here is also a bodily reaction to the photograph. This very photo is anonymous — I don't know who those 11 women are or what brought them together. I found it in a flea market in St. Petersburg maybe 5 years ago. Every movement series of my dance starts with the posture of one of the characters, from the sides to the centre, and I see it as a way to interact with them, to embody them.

The preparation for the performance I've done with a choreographer included a lot of guessing and speculating about every woman in the photograph. We studied their postures, features, and clothing very attentively, and eventually, they all became very dear and close to me, like some kind of lost family.

I think the performance did connect the exhibition together, enriching the communication with the photograph with one more layer. It informed the painting a lot, too. I'm not a professional dancer and don't try to pretend I am, but in painting I also try to approach the surface from a raw side, not doing something particularly clever to manipulate the viewer into liking it.

I believe in honesty — that the only skill I develop in art is how honest I can be.

Please find the link to the video of the performance in bio!

Address

London

Opening Hours

Thursday 7pm - 9pm
Friday 7pm - 9pm

Telephone

+447808667403

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