JULIA SONATA
Resident of CUTOUT COLLAGE ART PROJECT: March 2024 - Today
Born in Crimea, Ukraine. Currently lives in Potsdam, Germany.
In 2007 she graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Sevastopol National Technical University.
In 2012, she began her professional career in photography, working in a family photo studio in Sevastopol. In 2013, she moved from Sevastopol to Yevpatoria and opened her own photo studio there. She focused on commercial portrait photography.
At the same time, she started working on project photography, through which she could share her personal perspective with the viewer. This is how the projects "My Room - My Rules" about the inner world of teenagers
through a look at the rooms they live in and "Creator", a synergy project with a teenage poet about portraying people through their hands, appeared.
In the summer of 2016, she moved from Crimea to Odesa.
In 2019, she made a photo project " Searching for the Form" about people of different professions for the magazine "LaBoussole".
At the end of 2019, she started working on the project "Universe 2.0", about the hidden superpower of ordinary teenagers, their fragility and strength, dreams and failures, and about the age when everything begins. This project lasted for 2 years and in 2021 ended with an online book, where you could read interviews with 20 heroes aged 13 to 17, as well as see their portraits.
In December 2021, she began experimenting with analog collage, which revealed new perspectives in art.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, she moved to Germany.
In June 2022, she created the installation project "HOME" (collage and photography) about the ephemeral nature of the sense of security and stability. A project that raised questions like "where is my home and what does this word mean to me?" (WagenBurg art space, Potsdam, Germany).
Since March 2022, she has been working as a coordinator of Ukrainian projects at ProjektHaus INWOLE e.V., where she created a space for Ukrainian teenagers called "Teen Spirit" to help young people adapt to new realities. As part of this project, Yulia also conducts workshops on collage, photography, and short film making.
In January 2024, she curated the multimedia exhibition of youth art "Mind Capture" at the INWOLE conference hall (Potsdam), and then at the Berlin hub "UA Nest".
Since November 2023, she has also been curating the INSIDE THE CROCO project, where together with teenagers and tutors from various disciplines (psychology, screenwriting, animation, sound design, etc.) they make short animated films on psychological topics. In August 2024, the project won the Integrationspreises der Landeshauptstadt Potsdam 2024 award in the Teamwork category.
In Berlin and Potsdam, Yulia participates in various charity art markets, conducts workshops, documenting and illuminating the activities of pro-Ukrainian organizations such as VITSCHE, Gemeinsam4Ukraine, and others.
In February 2024, she took part in the collective art installation "JOLKA" by UCC Berlin for the project "CAFE KYIV" with the collage "Revolution".
In early 2024, she became a resident of the Ukrainian art project CUTOUT COLLAGE
EXHIBITIONS
2024
- “Heimatart 2024” - a collective exhibition of artists with a migrant background, organized by the Migration Council of the City of Potsdam, Bürgerhaus am Schlaatz, Potsdam, Germany.
- “For the Sake of the Letter”, an exhibition dedicated to the rights of Ukrainian prisoners of war, organized by the community My Ministry of Culture under the patronage of CUTOUT, Le Bonheur est Dans L'instant gallery, Paris, France.
- “Looking into Ourselves”, a collective exhibition of CUTOUT residents as part of the KAOS collage festival, Kranj, Slovenia.
- "Looking into Ourselves", a collective exhibition of CUTOUT residents, CUTOUT COLLAGE STUDIO, Kyiv, Ukraine
- Group exhibition of visual art "JOLKA" by UCC Berlin for the event "CAFE KYIV" - Berlin, Germany.
Solo exhibitions
2022
- Personal exhibition of photography and collages "HOME" - art space "WagenBurg" - Potsdam, Germany
2016
- Personal photo exhibition "Creator" - Gallery "Park" - Sevastopol, Ukraine.
2015
- Personal photo exhibition "My room, my rules" - "Fabrika" - Simferopol, Ukraine
ARTWORKS
Collage helped me to cope with painful emotions at the beginning of the war.
Back then, art lost all its sense for me. But thanks to collage, I was able to transform pain into creation. For me, collage is also a way of communicating with my subconscious, a way to get answers to complicated questions.