About

Artist Statement

Yana Payusova creates paintings, sculptures, and installations that examine how power, ideology, and cultural beliefs shape personal experiences. Drawing from her upbringing in the Soviet Union during its collapse and aftermath, she transforms bodies, domestic objects, gestures, folklore, and historical imagery into narratives that are both psychologically and politically charged.

Her work shifts between the intimate and the theatrical. It combines humor, absurdity, beauty, and unease. Familiar images and objects are altered and recontextualized, creating unexpected relationships that reveal the beliefs and expectations embedded within them.

Payusova is especially interested in the unstable space between personal memory and official history. She explores how stories are constructed, inherited, revised, and transformed over time. In her practice, historical imagery becomes myth, everyday gestures become symbolic, and objects serve as carriers of memory and cultural meaning. Through these transformations, her work questions how larger systems of power influence everyday life and shape how we see, remember, behave, and understand ourselves.

BIO

Yana Payusova is a contemporary artist working in painting, sculpture, and installation. She was born in Leningrad, USSR, and grew up during the last years of the Soviet Union. At seventeen, she immigrated to the United States. She earned her MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Payusova's work has been shown internationally at various institutions, including the Museu de Ceràmica de l’Alcora in Spain, Ceramic Avenue Art Gallery in Jingdezhen, China, Santa Joana Museum in Portugal, and Conduit Gallery in Dallas. Her art has also been featured at the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan and the 63rd Premio Faenza in Italy. Additionally, her work has appeared at the Gyeonggi Ceramics Biennale in South Korea. It is part of the permanent collections at the DeCordova Museum, Boston Public Library, Museu de Ceràmica de l'Alcora, and Crocker Art Museum.

She has been an artist-in-residence at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center and C.R.E.T.A. Rome. Meow Wolf commissioned her for a permanent installation at The Real Unreal in Grapevine, Texas.

Currently, Payusova is an Associate Professor of Practice and FYE Program Chair at the University of Arizona School of Art.