"Apolonia, Apolonia" protagonist.
Born in 1988 in Paris, Apolonia Sokół is a French figurative painter of Polish descent. After graduating from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, she moved to the United States and settled in New York where she worked in Dan Colen’s studio. She later moved to Los Angeles where she befriended other artists and painters with whom she started an ongoing conversation on figurative painting.
She is known for her political stance on the art of portraiture, claiming the need to use it as a tool of empowerment and deconstruction of marginalization and domination. That is why she addresses multiple issues such as feminisms, queerness, women’s representation throughout art history and body politics in general.
Her most recent institutional exhibitions include Possessed: Deviance, Performance, Resistance curated by Vincent Honoré at the MOCO Museum La Panacée and Conversation Piece VII Verso Narragonia (Towards Narragonia) curated by Marcello Smarrelli at the Fondazione Memmo in Rome as well as Women and Change at ARKEN Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark), Women painting Women curated by Andrea Karnes at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Texas, USA) and A Sentimental Choice curated by Anael Pigeat and Sophie Vigourous at Fondation Ricard (Paris, France). Her latest exhibition in Istanbul marks the end of the artist’s residency at the Academy of Rome and encompasses three years of research around the legacy of Artemisia Gentileschi.
In 2020, Apolonia Sokół was the laureate of the prestigious Academy of France and became one of the residents of Villa Medici for 2020-2021. HBO MAX & Danish Documentaries co-produced a documentary which recently premiered in Amsterdam’s International Film Festival and was awarded The Best Film (International Competition) at IDFA. The documentary is directed by Lea Glob who has followed Sokol over the past decade. Sokol teaches at the Fine Arts Academy of Caen, Esam.
