SOPHIA VESNA
VISUAL ARTIST & ACTRESS
Sophia Vesna is a Belarusian self-taught artist whose visual language blends narrative drawing, surreal intuition, and poetic restraint. Born in Minsk in 1995, she spent her childhood between Eastern Europe and Japan, having moved to Tokyo at the age of six with her mother. This dual upbringing — steeped in Slavic folklore, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and animation — continues to shape her dreamlike aesthetic, where intimate worlds emerge in graphite, ink, and improvisation.
Originally trained in the performing arts, Vesna studied musical theatre in London and drama at Cours Florent in Paris. She worked as an actress in short films and series — including roles in The New Look (Apple TV) and Kreskine (2023) — before shifting her focus to drawing as a more inward, personal form of expression. “I realized I wanted to create characters as much as I enjoy embodying them.”
Her first exhibition, Échos Graphite (Maison Picturale, Paris, 2024), featured a series of graphite illustrations for Fabuleuses Démangeaisons, a poetry book by Gabriel Chirouze. Her work — quiet, melancholic, and precise — explores themes of childhood, nature, femininity and memory, with a surreal, almost whispered intensity.
In 2025, Vesna debuted her Espresso series, in which she splashes brewed coffee onto paper and then draws over the random stains with fine-liner ink, revealing hidden figures and imagined stories. The process, performed live on TikTok and Twitch in four languages (Russian, Japanese, French and English), has become a signature of her practice — tactile, intuitive, and deeply interactive. The works were exhibited at La Brûlerie de Bernay later that year.
She also collaborates across disciplines. Her Textures series, created in dialogue with composer Jonathan Fitas for his EP Leap of Faith (2025), transforms sound into visual form. The six abstract ink drawings — printed on textured paper with a blend of pigment and Normandy soil — reflect Vesna’s desire to root visual art in sensory experience and natural materiality.
Now based in Normandy, she continues to explore live drawing, artist books, and hybrid formats. Whether working in pencil, ink or coffee, Sophia Vesna builds fragile universes where accidents become symbols, and childhood echoes are never far from the surface.
Originally trained in the performing arts, Vesna studied musical theatre in London and drama at Cours Florent in Paris. She worked as an actress in short films and series — including roles in The New Look (Apple TV) and Kreskine (2023) — before shifting her focus to drawing as a more inward, personal form of expression. “I realized I wanted to create characters as much as I enjoy embodying them.”
Her first exhibition, Échos Graphite (Maison Picturale, Paris, 2024), featured a series of graphite illustrations for Fabuleuses Démangeaisons, a poetry book by Gabriel Chirouze. Her work — quiet, melancholic, and precise — explores themes of childhood, nature, femininity and memory, with a surreal, almost whispered intensity.
In 2025, Vesna debuted her Espresso series, in which she splashes brewed coffee onto paper and then draws over the random stains with fine-liner ink, revealing hidden figures and imagined stories. The process, performed live on TikTok and Twitch in four languages (Russian, Japanese, French and English), has become a signature of her practice — tactile, intuitive, and deeply interactive. The works were exhibited at La Brûlerie de Bernay later that year.
She also collaborates across disciplines. Her Textures series, created in dialogue with composer Jonathan Fitas for his EP Leap of Faith (2025), transforms sound into visual form. The six abstract ink drawings — printed on textured paper with a blend of pigment and Normandy soil — reflect Vesna’s desire to root visual art in sensory experience and natural materiality.
Now based in Normandy, she continues to explore live drawing, artist books, and hybrid formats. Whether working in pencil, ink or coffee, Sophia Vesna builds fragile universes where accidents become symbols, and childhood echoes are never far from the surface.
