Evy Jokhova - Pattern

Evy Jokhova is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice engages with dialogue and relationships between social anthropology, architecture, philosophy and art. Working with drawing, sculpture, installation, film, food and participatory events, Jokhova aims to bridge gaps between these fields and their inherent hierarchical structures.

Born in Switzerland, Jokhova lived in the USSR, Austria, Estonia, UK, Azerbaijan and Portugal. She is currently based between Lisbon and Tallinn. Her multi-cultural background and exposure to diverse social and political structures in altering states of flux and stability form the backbone of Jokhova’s research and practice, that investigates the relationships between things, how social behaviour and habits can be altered through architecture, landscape and body memory. Exploring social narratives and remembered ‘truths’, Jokhova questions her own subjective role in and relationship to society, history, landscape and architecture. The complex relationships between the perceived, the imagined and the accepted norm are driving factors in Jokhova’s multi-facetted practice which is also often supported by anthropological fieldwork and interviews.

Jokhova works on a project-by-project basis. Recent projects include: ‘Three Colours: Green’ – for which Jokhova travelled to Peru where she lived with the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous community. Three Colours: Green is the result of research developed by the artist during this period. By experiencing everyday life as all-encompassing rituals, which involve all elements in a relationship of interdependence, the artist explored unique modes of care, rooted in the idea of totality. Reactivating ancestral knowledge that requires a renewed look at nature, its richness, and processes, Evy Jokhova invites us to think about the potential of the primal, legitimizing it and seeking to affirm its space in contemporary culture.

Other recent projects include: ‘The Shape of Ritual’ – a project exploring the relationship between sound, architecture and the body through transcribing buildings into music and then into dancen; and ‘I dance for you my edifice’ –  a project that investigates our relationship with stone — as ‘historical constant’ whose significance is simultaneously entwined with ancient mythology and contemporary obsessions with materiality and synthesis through site-specific installations comprised of interactive sound sculptures, images and performances. Since 2014 the artist has run  Allotment – a collaborative research project that explores social relationships and cultural politics through food.