dialogue
Sonya Derviz | Artist
May 2025
5 min read
Sonya Derviz's artistic journey began in Moscow and brought her to London in 2006. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art in 2018, and received honours such as the UCL Dean’s List and the Stanbury Prize. Her paintings often evoke a dreamlike, metaphysical atmosphere, exploring themes of possibility and emotional depth. Shifting and layered, so often obliterated into her own dialect of soft chaos, Derviz’s compositions react to collated, ephemeral visual sources, drawings, illustrations, paintings and photographs.
Currently, Sonya Derviz is showcasing her second solo exhibition titled 'Near and Far' at Sherbet Green. This exhibition features new paintings that delve into the complexities of human experience through her unique artistic lens. Concurrently, Derviz is preparing for an upcoming duo show with Joel Wycherley at Sadie Coles HQ, organised and curated by Soft Commodity.
Photography by Kalpesh Lathigra.
Hi Sonya! Your journey began in Moscow and later brought you to London in 2006. In what ways have these distinct cultural environments shaped your artistic perspective?
“Emotionally, the environment I grew up in has stayed with me. My first connection to art as a child was through Constructivist and Suprematist works. It later became important to understand the influence artists like Malevich or Rozanova had in the West, especially in abstraction, which I only began to grasp after moving to London.
I also attended a Russian art school from the age of five or six. We painted still lifes, made sketches of plaster casts, and illustrated Russian fairy tales. The structure was quite rigid, but I didn’t mind it, when I look back at those works, they’re wild and full of strange energy. I think the need to create my own structure, my own conditions for painting, has stayed with me.
Something else I’ve noticed is that the pigments used in painting are different. There are a lot of ochres, browns, violets, and greens that seem to come from Armenian or Georgian pigments, Gutankarskian Violet, Pheodosian Brown, Sevanskian Green. There are so many variations of brown.”
Sonya Derviz, Glacier, Oil and charcoal on linen, 200 x 225 cm, 2025.
Your paintings frequently convey a dreamlike, almost metaphysical atmosphere. What themes or narrative threads do you find yourself returning to in your practice?
“I think it’s more to do with possibility. Maybe the dreamlike quality that people often mention comes from this tension between what can be seen and what can be felt. With painting, I have to kind of extend what I know, and in painting, somehow, this is visible. The image is both constructed and deconstructed.”
Sonya Derviz, Branches, Oil and charcoal on linen, 170 x 200 cm, 2025.
Could you describe a typical day in your studio? How do you balance time between experimentation and concentrated making?
“I create time when I am only painting - and not engaging with much else. This could be months or weeks. Painting becomes the centre of everything, I kind of need to live through what I am making. And then there are times when I don’t paint as much but I read, write, and draw… a lot, collect and accumulate things.”
Sonya Derviz, The sun turning into water, Oil and charcoal on linen, 200 x 220 cm, 2025.
You are represented by the brilliant gallery Sherbet Green. Do you have any insights or advice for artists currently seeking gallery representation?
“I think it's important to work with a gallery that supports you in growing and experimenting. We worked on two shows together first and discussed representation nearly a year in advance, so it was a carefully considered decision on both sides.”
Sonya Derviz, Untitled, Oil on hessian, 200 x 220 cm, 2020.
Are there particular works in your forthcoming solo exhibition, Near and Far, with Sherbet Green that signal a shift or evolution in your practice?
“All of the works!”
Sonya Derviz, The forest floor, Oil on linen, 200 x 220 cm, 2025.
Turning to your duo show with Joel Wycherley at Sadie Coles HQ — how did the collaboration with Soft Commodity come about, and how would you characterise this exhibition in relation to your solo with Sherbet Green?
“Soft Commodity were already familiar with my work and saw it as an interesting pairing with Joel Wycherley’s. They wanted to create a focus for this exhibition and were very thoughtful about the relationship between our works, so it was a different process from working on a solo show, which, for me, was more open-ended. I really appreciated that they engaged with my work by thinking about structure, the idea of exposure and concealment, and this exhibition developed out of those conversations.”
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