Sonia Jia

Concerned with precarious and ambiguous affections and intimacies, Sonia Jia’s paintings are a visual reflection on one’s complexities, exploring how people seek and fit to one another. Working from her own diaries, emotions, traumas, and irrational reflections across oil and canvas, pottery, plaster casting, and moulding, Jia’s paintings and installations aim to dissolve interpersonal boundaries and foster unfaltering solidarities. Deeply inspired by the body and its powerful healing abilities, her muted palettes draw from bruising, scarring, wrinkled skin, and remembrances of small intimacies to create painterly realms of connectivity where artist and viewer all join in continuity. 

Sonia Jia (b. 2000) graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting, having completed her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her short film, ‘Her Feather, Her Body’ (2021), has won a number of awards in global film festivals and competitions, including the New York International Film Awards’ ‘Best LGBTQ’ and ‘Best Sound Design’, Florence Film Awards’ ‘LGBTQ Silver’ and ‘Sound Design Gold’, and the Paris Film Awards ‘Best LGBTQ’. Her work has been exhibited internationally in New York, Milan, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and London. She lives and works in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Chicago and London.