Light Holds No Memory. Anastasiia Sonina
9 August – 13 September 2022
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Atticus Gallery presents Light Holds No Memory, a solo exhibition by Anastasiia Sonina, an emerging multidisciplinary artist. Born in 2000 in Samara, Russia, and now based in the UK, Sonina’s practice explores the delicate tensions between personal memory, collective history, and the fluid, shifting nature of perception. Her innovative approach merges analogue photography printed on aluminium with acrylic interventions, creating immersive works that blur the boundaries between documentation and interpretation.
Through her hybrid process, Sonina challenges the idea that photographs offer fixed records of the past. Instead, her painterly gestures transform them into mutable traces, complicating their original meanings. Her works unfold as abstract landscapes and fragmented spaces, inviting viewers to engage with the interplay between presence and absence, permanence and impermanence, and the fragile structure of memory itself.
Drawing on Rosalind Krauss’s post-medium condition, Sonina’s practice dissolves distinctions between photography, painting, and sculpture. The use of cold, reflective aluminium surfaces becomes a metaphor for industrial permanence, standing in contrast to the ephemeral nature of analogue photographs. Her addition of acrylic paint disrupts the photographic image, reinterpreting it as an expressive, emotional encounter. This aligns with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, which emphasises the shifting and relational nature of perception—meaning arises not statically but through interaction with the viewer as they navigate the works from different perspectives.
Sonina also draws on Roland Barthes’s concept of the photograph as a “that-has-been”, highlighting the way photographs act as traces of moments that can never be fully retrieved. Yet, by obscuring and transforming photographic elements with acrylic, Sonina reflects the fragmented, unstable nature of memory—one that is continually rewritten through acts of recollection and forgetting. Her practice becomes an exploration of how both personal and cultural memories are layered and blurred, suggesting that meaning remains fluid, always open to reinterpretation.
Her abstract landscapes dissolve horizon lines into gradients, creating liminal spaces—neither fully present nor absent—that evoke the ambiguity of displacement, migration, and identity. Geometric forms, such as bars and rectangles, intersect these spaces, suggesting attempts to impose structure on undefined experiences. Yet these forms remain incomplete, hinting at the inherent instability of framing and interpretation, much like Derrida’s deconstruction, where meaning is always provisional and shaped by both presence and absence.
Sonina’s work also reflects the challenges of post-Soviet identity, exploring the tension between the burden of historical narratives and the search for personal meaning in an era of constant transition. The contrast between the permanence of aluminium and the ephemeral gestures of paint reflects the difficulty of reconciling past and present. Her use of a muted palette—dominated by blues, greens, and browns—evokes a nostalgic undertone, though one complicated by abstraction, suggesting that memory and identity remain unresolved and in flux.
Her dreamlike landscapes evoke the sublime, as theorised by Edmund Burke and Jean-François Lyotard—spaces that confront viewers with the unrepresentable, where awe and uncertainty coexist. Through the interplay of light, shadow, and reflection, Sonina’s works invite reflection on the fragility of the natural world and the tension between organic and artificial elements in the Anthropocene.
The installation at Atticus Gallery enhances these themes, with works displayed in a circular black-walled space, creating an immersive environment. Vertical steel sculptures echo the forms found in her paintings, establishing a dialogue between two- and three-dimensional elements. The soft lighting highlights the reflective surfaces of the aluminium, subtly incorporating the viewer’s presence into the work. This interplay of light, shadow, and reflection reinforces the themes of memory, perception, and ambiguity at the core of Sonina’s practice.
Visitor Information
Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday | 10:00 – 18:00
Location: Atticus Gallery, 11a Queen Street, Bath
Admission: Free
