Sophie-Luise Passow

Born in Vienna/Austria in 1994. My artistic practice embodies biotic realities that are otherwise imperceptible or hidden. I specialize in paintings that are influenced by and blur the boundaries between multiple disciplines, including drawing, printmaking, photography, and textile. My compositions are characterized by underlying repetitive patterns—codes derived from society's collective visual memory. Another feature is a pervasive sense of adaptive fragility, analogous to that found in organic life forms. The framelessness of the unmounted linen canvas makes it feel light, delicate, fragile, while in fact making the work resilient, sturdy, and adaptable. My central theme is maternal-fetal conflict—a biological phenomenon where the interests of the mother and the developing child diverge. Evolutionarily, from the point of view of the fetus, the mother's body is its environment. To survive, the fetus is geared to exploit it for nutrition and other resources by any means. To the gravida, the half-father fetus is a genetic intruder—a parasite that the immune system should protect her from. Locked into an evolutionary arms race, the two have been battling it out over millennia.