Residency Artist – Yana Knight

Ungefär en månad sedan vistades konstnären Yana Knight i vårt konstnärsresidens för tredje gången. Här kan du läsa om Yana (på engelska nedan), hennes konst och arbete under hennes besök i Nordingrå Konstby.

Yana Knight is an artist currently based in Stockholm (Sweden) and Brussels (Belgium) who transforms her life into comics, zines and graphic novels. Yana’s work is playfully experimental, both in terms of the methods and the materials involved. She has been mixing multiple old and new technologies often in a single work, from traditional ways of image making (drawings, photos, block printing) to more recently incorporating Artificial Intelligence in her artistic palette as another material to enrich her narratives and comics.

Yana’s comics and cartoons are rooted in personal experiences of living a colourful life (in six countries and through many adventures), daily happenings and small but important life’s delights. Her method of comic making is one where personal stories, memories and experiences of everyday life are transformed into visual fragments or narratives – part real life, part fiction – in a playful, humorous way. Subtly, they draw attention to larger more universal themes such as nature’s cycles, environment, transformation and finding ways to live in a changing landscape.

My past project in Nordingrå was a zine about never seeing a moose. You can read and see photos of it here, it was made in the printing workshop and then extended with a bit of AI later on: https://storyofyana.com/what-about-moose

I showed the zine, amongst other things in an expo in New Orleans (you can see that in the photo named NewOrleansMoose).

I was initially attracted to Nordingrå by its artistic community and the printing press where I could try out making comics on a letterpress, which was a great experience. Since my first visit last summer I keep coming back every season for a follow up moose adventure – in October my follow up project was called “Being moose” (work in progress). I come back here to keep chasing the moose, to see the landscape transforming in every season and most of all, because of the people and the community I’ve found here.

Läs mer om Yana:

Hemsida: https://storyofyana.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yana_knight/