Katya Granova
London
Katya Granova (b.1988) is an artist and curator that was born in St Petersburg, Russia and currently lives in London, UK. Her first degree was obtained in Social Psychology, then she gradually changed her career to art practice. Granova also holds MA Art&Space Degree from Kingston University London, Certificate degree from Paris College of Art, finished ICA Moscow course “New artistic strategies” and MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include Yield, No.20 arts, London (2021), LondonGrads2021, Saatchi Gallery, London (2021), New painting, Galerie Dutko, Paris (2020).

Granova is a current member and a co-founder of the APXIV art collective, which has had many exhibitions over the last 4 years in Moscow, St Petersburg, Budapest, and Copenhagen.
She has held residencies with the Barbican Art Trust(2022), Sommer Atelier Aschersleben(2022), Dukley Art Residence in Montenegro(2020), Sphera Fund Moscow (2021), Art Residency Normandy(2020), the Kunstarhuset Messen residency in Alvik, Norway(2016). Granova was shortlisted for Bankley prize 2019, Bridgeman Studio Award 2020, John Moores Painting Prize 2020 and has won a Signature Art Prize 2020 in the painting category.
In 2020 she also collaborated with Burberry UK for a commercial project and in 2021 Royal College of Art bought the work “Surgeons” for their public permanent collection.

In her painting practice she uses old photographs as base compositions for large scale visceral paintings. For Granova the act of painting is a performative bodily intrusion into the documentation of someone else’s unapproachable past to give it a fictional dimension and reapproach the concept of historical memory.