Ksenia Kazintseva – Theo Ritzinger

Working across installation, painting, sculpture, and craft, Theo Ritzinger and Ksenia explore themes of identity, memory, and connection through distinct yet complementary lenses. Their practices engage with the tension between designed structures - be they physical, cultural, or digital - and the intimate, often communal ways people navigate, subvert, and find meaning within them. Theo s work examines the relationship between built environments and human behavior, revealing the gaps between intended function and lived experience. Drawing on traditions of academic painting, architecture, and graphic design, he employs bold colour, graphic form, and layered visual language to blur semiotic and semantic boundaries. His practice often uses found imagery, pictograms, and text to obscure and reframe meaning, challenging viewers to reconsider what is hidden, revealed, or reimagined. Ksenia s immersive installations delve into the intersection of folklore and contemporary life in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Russia. Drawing on her heritage, she uses traditional crafts, storytelling, folk song, and ritualistic practices as tools for cultural healing and community-building. Her work navigates the blurred lines between religion and paganism, emphasizing collective memory, spiritual connection, and a deep relationship with nature. Through participatory making and co-creation, she seeks to reclaim and celebrate Eastern European identities in resistance to narratives of assimilation and erasure. Together, Theo and Ksenia create spaces - both physical and conceptual - where historical, personal, and symbolic languages intertwine. Their collaborative ethos invites reflection on how we inhabit worlds shaped by architecture, ancestry, and digital systems, and how through art, we might decode, reconstruct, and connect across these layered terrains.