Beauty & Fear Collage

Tatiana Johnson creates lens-based textile works that inhabit the space between photography and sculpture. Her current body of work explores sublimation transfer on layered fabric—image-bearing surfaces that hold light, memory, and emotion in porous suspension. Each piece is hand-constructed, stitched, and stretched, forming quiet alchemical compositions where photographic traces dissolve into translucency. This new series of five works marks a turning point in Johnson’s practice: a movement toward tactile image-making rooted in impermanence, atmosphere, and frame disruption. Her work invites slow looking—into soft thresholds of presence, light, and breath. Johnson holds an MFA from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Her work has been exhibited internationally in Switzerland, the U.S.A., and China. Past works were licensed via Saatchi Art for inclusion in a U.S. hotel project led by then-chief curator Rebecca Wilson.