"Rocaille 13" Painting

Fedora Akimova is a mixed-media artist born in 1987 in Kyiv. Since March 2022, she has been living and working in Tbilisi (Georgia) and Paris.

"I pay particular attention to materials that carry traces of memory, care, and decay. Textiles and embroidery, traditionally relegated to the “female” sphere, become in my projects a means of expression and resistance. I work with fabrics, objects, waste, and organic matter — materials that preserve history and transformation. For me, they are not just forms, but a way to bring into visibility processes of care, everydayness, and bodily routine that remain hidden from the official language of culture.

The philosophy of Édouard Glissant and Gilles Deleuze, the ideas of creolization and “and… and… and,” inspire me to think in terms of multiplicities, mismatches, and rhythms. I seek artistic forms that do not aim to erase differences but insist on their value. Art becomes a laboratory for thinking “beyond binaries.”

Today, in the context of war and the radicalization of society, the return of simple dichotomies — “us/them,” “good/evil” — is especially acute. I see this as a symptom of imperial and totalitarian thinking, where unity is possible only through the image of an enemy. In this situation, my practice becomes a form of resistance to simplified narratives and exclusionary politics.

It is important for me to create works in which difference does not lead to rupture, but becomes a condition for coexistence. For me, art is not only about aesthetics but also an ethical and political necessity: the defense of complexity, opacity, and multiplicity as the foundation of our future."