YULIA REPINA

Self Portrait. Fears,

2020-2022 | Porcelain, virtual reality

Yulia Repina confronts her fears, examining them from different perspectives through this body of work. The object placed within a virtual reality world provides a delicate balance between the tangible and the ephemeral. Embedded in the work is the contradictory duality of each character, representing the juxtaposition of strength and weakness, hidden and visible, rational and emotional.

The choice of delicate porcelain is intentional. It reflects the unpredictable nature of fears. The cracks from the high firing, filled with red pigment, add a final touch that brings the cold white porcelain to life, creating an impression of vitality and bleeding.Virtual reality often complements and enhances experiences.

Viewed through the VR space, the objects grow in size and multiply just like fears do. This interaction blurs the boundaries between the object and virtual reality, creating a unique and multi-dimensional and thought-provoking experience.

YULIA REPINA, a ceramics graduate from the Academy of Art in St. Petersburg, Russia, has been based in Munich, Germany, since 2012. Alongside her career as a studio artist, she leads a design team at the IT company JetBrains. A member of IAC since 2017, Yulia boasts over two decades of international experience, participating in exhibitions, symposiums, art residencies, and ceramics festivals across the globe, including China, Japan, Thailand, Korea, France, Italy, and more. Her recent endeavors include artistic residencies at La Meridiana (2021), Faenza ACC (2021), Guldagergaard (2022), and Kecskemét International Ceramics Studio (2023).

Yulia collaborated with a group of coders, designers, and tech enthusiasts from JetBrains - a software vendor specializing in creating intelligent development tools. The group is exploring augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and extended reality (XR). Together, they’ve created an XR project to be showcased at the Triennale.