I met Sofia Zubi at an art gallery in Manhattan. She is a painter, illustrator, and poet. Her passionate thinking and beautiful ideas made us immediately friends during Amuleto’s stay in New York. She came to our exhibition and events, and she introduced us to artists from her city. Sofia is a full time artist. Recently, she began painting and studying at the residency, ESKFF, at Mana Contemporary in New Jersey. Sofia is working on a body of work titled, Place of the Unusual, a series about passion, love, nostalgia, and introspection. With fauvist and expressionist colors, Sofia creates a universe, centering around a female figure, a spectacle of herself. Your eyes follow arrows and stairs, flowers and houses full of lamps, books and instruments. You are taken through homes with open windows with escaping birds, humans surrounded by animals, loyalty in the form of her dog, and imagined horses running free. The combination of every element with the composition suggests a narrative of internal thinking. The symbols within her work are like a visual poem placed in a surrealistic arrangement. The atmosphere seems nostalgic yet the humans in it look autonomous and real. These drawings and illustrations are part of the studies for her bookSawdust, both written and illustrated by Sofia, to be published in 2022. The book is an extension of her beliefs and universe told through a Princess who finds herself by following her passion. You can find her on Instagram with a quote of Rainer Maria Rilke: “There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.”
The Flowers He Brings
Ink and Gouache
38 x 28 cm
2019
$885 usd
Take Off
Paper and Acrylic on Canvas
45 x 90 cm
2020
$1300 USD
When the World Split in Half
Acrylic on Canvas
55 x 89 cm
2018
$2000 USD
The Journey Home
Ink and Watercolour on Canvas
40 x 28 cm
2018
$540 USD
The Journey Between Walls
Gouache
20 x 20 cm
2019
$540 USD
Friday Eve
Acrylic on Canvas
30 x 40 cm
2017
$715 USD
Palace Feet
Ink and Acrylic on Canvas
43 x 33 cm
2018
$1000 USD
Building the Courage to Face the Moon
Gouache
20 x 20 cm
2017
$460 USD
Brooklyn Haley
Acrylic on Canvas
43 x 35 cm
2018
$1700 USD
Sofia Zubi is an artist, illustrator, and writer currently living and working in New Jersey. She was born in 1993 in Newport Beach, California and studied at both Art Center College of Design and Pratt Institute with a BFA in Painting and Art History. Since Sofia graduated in 2017, she first focused on her studio practice in Freehold, New Jersey. She dabbled in curatorial projects with galleries in the East Coast, showing her work both domestically and abroad. When she decided to move back to Brooklyn, New York, in 2019, living in a small shared space forced her to begin her first children’s book, Sawdust. That year she came up with over one hundred miniature gouache paintings and illustrations for Sawdust, which is planning to be published in 2022. Currently Sofia is working on a new series titled, Place of the Unusual, in ESKFF’s residency program at Mana Contemporary.