Irina Skornyakova

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

Irina Skornyakova is an interdisciplinary artist residing in Los Angeles, drawn in by the California deserts and L.A.’s urban patchwork. Through her series of photos, videos, and wall sculptures, Irina contemplates the interplay between the physical and digital in the age of the Anthropocene. Irina’s current series, “Pixels”, is influenced by the arid and drought-heavy landscape of southern California. In her wall sculptures, she constructs textured surfaces with unfired clay, allowing the material to crackle as it dries on individual units. These assembled sequences serve as a visual representation of geologic time, data, and screen resolution. The assemblages of small textured building blocks, referred to as "pixels," provoke contemplation on the physical extraction of materials required to sustain contemporary technology and urbanization. Through this exploration, Irina reflects on the fragmented nature of the region resulting from operations like mining, oil drilling, and urban sprawl, all of which have shaped and attracted people to the Southern California coast. The latest iteration of “Pixels” draws inspiration from the artist's Russian immigrant background, incorporating elements of magical lore and embroidery patterns into the compositions. In Slavic cultures, embroidery on the edges of clothing has a lot of signifiers, including being markers for a region they are from. Irina’s latest pixel sequences are drawing from this tradition, creating patterns relating to...

Artwork