The Art Vacancy (TAV) is pleased to present its fourth The Next Gen (TNG) program, The Next Gen: Lita Poliakova. TNG is an initiative created to offer emerging artists the opportunity and resources to present a solo exhibition in collaboration with TAV.
Lita Poliakova (Life Is Torturing Awesome) is a visual artist of Russian origin who is currently based in Germany. She received her Bachelor’s degree in graphic design and fine arts from Baltic University of Foreign Languages and a second Bachelor’s degree in Intercultural Communications from State University of Technology in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Following her studies in Russia, she turned to more contemporary art and obtained her Master’s degree in visual culture and contemporary art at Aalto University (Helsinki, Finland) where she settled the key topics of her practice: distortive nature of pain, identity, and social constructs. During her studies, she was granted an Erasmus+ scholarship, which allowed her to get advanced training in visual arts at Faculty of Fine Arts at Porto University (Porto, Portugal). In addition, she has produced a project at the 32nd Sao Paulo Biennale (Sao Paulo, Brazil), where she worked with visitors and challenged their expression of mental image of color associated with a notion of home. That same year she was engaged in an international art program within the Process Space art festival (Ruse, Bulgaria) where she enriched her toolbox with mixed media techniques. Currently, Poliakova is developing her work to depict distortion in her own custom-made media while meditating on issues, such as sexuality and power, as well as mass culture, by means of collage.