Katja Novitskova (1984) deals in her work with the depiction of evolutional development, using internet as the source of visual data. In the early 2010s, she was among the first artists, who took post-internet for subject matter and designed its aesthetics. Novitskova’s ouvre situates in the crossing of visual culture and science fiction, inducing discomfort and enstrangement by blending futuristic fantasy with everyday reality. In general, Novitskova works in installative method, using photo-sculptures as her main medium.
One of Novitskova’s earliest artworks “Post-internet Survival Guide 2010” is a pioneering handbook, which offers solutions for coping with the situation in which internet has become a pre-condition and therefore the senses of a human-being are flooded with signs. In 2017, Katja Novitskova represented Estonia in 57th Venice Biennial with the exhibition “If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes”, which focused on the digital culture of contemporary times, looking back at it from a science-fictional position, when the world as we know it today, didn’t exist. That brought up questions of recognizing the hi-tech reality – who dares to say that the actual life is fantastic film and future is now?
Katja Novitskova studied semiotics in University of Tartu, new media in University of Lübeck and graphic design in Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. During 2013—2015 she took part of a residency in Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Novitskova has had personal exhibitions in several parts of the world – in Shangai Project(2017), New York City Hall Park (2017), Kunstverein Hamburg (2016), Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler in Berlin (2014), Bard Center for Curatorial Studies in New York (with Timur Si-Qin) (2012) and Arcadia Missa Gallery in London (with Amalia Ulman) (2012). In addition she has participated in exhibitions in MoMA (2015), but also Lyon (2015) and Berlin biennials (2016). Novitskova was awarded with