Women At Work:

A selection of works by Women Artists at Sapar Contemporary

February 6 - February 16, 2024

About Artists

Sofia Cacciapaglia (Italy)

Sofia Cacciapaglia was born in Ponte dell’Olio, Italy in 1983. She studied Fine Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milano where she graduated in 2006. After graduating she moved to New York in 2007 and had her first solo show at Industria SuperStudio, curated by photographer Fabrizio Ferri. Since then her work has been exhibited in galleries, foundations and museums in Italy, Switzerland, UK and China. In 2011 she became the youngest artist invited to the Italian Pavillon for the 54° International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.

 In May 2019, she completed “Locus Amoenus,” her first large 360° installation that covered the walls of her studio with discarded cardboard boxes, which she transformed into a blossoming garden from floor to ceiling. This work brings with it an environmental message, giving the salvaged material a second life through the representation of nature and the rebirth of spring.

 Cacciapaglia’s paintings are about women. In her large oil paintings, figures live in a suspended, metaphysical world without any reference to reality. The female figures – monumental but also light and ethereal– emerge from the dream world and inhabit an enchanted dimension: they are linked to each other through contact and gazes, by silent dialogues which are at the base of the compositional balance. These women are symbols of a primordial woman. Painted flowers are seen as an expression of happiness and sweetness, like the female bodies. They are often very large and out of scale and dominate the observer in a veiled, magical and immersive way.

 In her paintings, Cacciapaglia I seeks lightness, harmony, the softness of shapes and colours, but above all mystery and silent contemplation. Apart from canvas, her favorite materials are simple ones such as cardboard and wrapping paper, because of their material structure and their neutral background color which gives the work a poetic vibration.

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu (Mongolia)

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu (b.1979) is a contemporary master of the Mongol Zurag painting, and is widely respected for her innovations in this style. She notably integrates traditional Mongolian and Buddhists motifs with contemporary themes, as she chronicles the lives of women and everyday, mundane life across the seasons in her post-nomadic homeland.

She began exhibiting as a student since 2001 and had solo exhibitions in Ulaanbaatar in 2006 and in 2018. Dagvasambuu participated in group exhibitions at home and internationally including exhibitions in Las Vegas (2006), Beijing (2008), Hong Kong (2011), Fukuoka (2012) London (2012), and Düsseldorf (2012). She has also participated in the Shanghai Bienniale (2012), the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (2014), and the Asia Pacific Triennial (Queensland, 2015). Dagvasambuu was also a part of the 2017 Documenta 14 tour.

Her works are included in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Smith College Museum of Art, Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Queensland Art Museum in Australia, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan.

Dagvasambuu’s development of traditional motifs and pictorial language into unique representations of Mongolian women amidst the rapidly changing life in the 21st century has been recognized in her home country. Her works were selected for the 2013 Grand Prix for Best Artworks of the Year from the National Modern Art Gallery of Mongolia for the 2018 Grand Prix for Best Artwork of the Year from the Union of Mongolian Artists. Dagvasambuu graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts, Mongolian University of Arts and Culture. She currently lives and works in Ulaanbataar.

Iryna Maksymova (Ukraine)

Iryna Maksymova (Ukraine)  is a Ukrainian figurative artist who works primarily in painting and collaged textile. Maksymova's influences can be traced to the early 20th century Ukrainian avant-garde, and in particular Neo-Primitivism, as well as to whimsical and fantastical works of Ukrainian self-taught female artists such as Mariya Pryimachenko. The artist also draws strong painting references from the Eastern European street art as can be seen in her bold marks, graffiti  tags, use of spray paint, consistent inclusion of various types of text, from energetic scribbles to hand-drawn words in Gothic letters. Maksymova’s vocabulary builds on the visual and literary tradition of Ukrainian folklore and “naive” narratives of self-taught and folk painters. She developed a unique and instantly recognizable visual language and storylines around representation of strong women, very often nudes. Maksymova often speaks about both femininity and masculinity, vulnerability and power, fragility and triumph, expressed through the bodies and actions of women. The artist also sees these majestic nude women in her work as “symbolic of the strength and resilience of a nation.”  Other beloved protagonists that appear on her canvases are animals, both pets such as dogs and and fantastical animals of folklore such as lions, tigers, snakes, dolphins, firebirds. Maksymova represents these sentient intelligent creatures sometimes as protectors of the people and the land, sometimes as saints and warriors - equal to their human counterparts. Maksymova often reflect about the importance of ideas around equality, human rights, feminism and animal rights for her work. She sees her art as a platform for social and political activism. 

Since 2020 Maksymova has exhibited widely in her native Ukraine, in Europe, Asia and North America, including exhibitions in  London (2022), Madrid (2022), Beijing (2022), Taipei (2023), Los Angeles (2021), Golden Coast (2021), New York (2022) and Berlin (2021). Her work has been acquired by important private and institutional collection in Europe and North America. Born and raised in Kolomyia, a small town in the western part of Ukraine, the artist now lives and works in Lviv. Maksymova who was in Europe in 2022, returned to Ukraine as soon as it has become possible and now works from her make-shift studio amid air raids and frequent disruptions of electricity, heating and water supplies. 

Zsofia Schweger (Hungary/UK)

Zsofia Schweger was born 1989 in Szeged, Hungary, and is currently an artist based in London.  Zsofia had lived in the US for 5 years and studied at Wellesley College in the Boston area, before she moved to London in 2013. She then attended the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating with an MA in 2015.

Zsofia’s work in painting is informed by her experience of moving countries: she is interested in human relationships to spaces in general and the notions of home and belonging in particular. In her paintings of domestic and public interiors, Zsofia uses reductive paint application, flat panels of colour and a muted palette in order to express a sense of both alienation and comfort.

Zsofia was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016 and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2017. She has been supported by several generous prizes, including the Jealous Prize, Griffin Art Prize, the Alice C. Cole Award, and the ‘One To Watch’ Award. Since her first solo exhibition at Griffin Gallery in London in 2016, she has had solo shows at Edel Assanti (London), Sapar Contemporary (New York), Lundgren Gallery (Palma), and Inda Gallery (Budapest).

Heeseop Yoon (Korea/US)

Heeseop Yoon was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. She holds her BFA from Chung-ang University, Seoul, Korea and MFA from City College of NY, NY. She is known for her large-scaled line drawing installations and also very intricate black and white drawings.

She has had solo and two-person shows at Triple Candie, March Gallery, and Bose Pacia, all NY; Arario Gallery, Seoul; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ; OZ Arts, Nashville, TN; and in Solitaire with Sara Berman at Sapar Contemporary, NYC.  She has recently also shown with Nuanced, Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, MA; TRAVERS, William Holman Gallery, NY,NY; Crossing Borders, Periphery Space Gallery, RI; and Drawing in Space, Des Moines Art Center, IA.  

She has exhibited in museums and art centers internationally, including MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; The Bronx Museum, NY; Seoul Arts Center, Korea; China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), Australiaand Media Art Center, Beijing, and has participated in several residencies such as the Lower East Side Printshop, Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation; Skowhegan School of Painting, and Artist Alliance Inc., all NY, and Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Germany. She completed her first public mural installation in Italian Market in Philadelphia and had a recent solo exhibition at Cityway Gallery, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, IN.  She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Yerke Abuova (Kazakhstan/US)

Yerke Abuova (Kazakhstan/US) is a Kazakh-American figurative artist, who has been painting and exhibiting her work since her early teens. She is currently pursuing  painting at Cornell University.  Abuova works in a variety of media, but primarily focuses on oil painting, murals and sculpture. She depicts  complex surreal environments that invent their own logic and create new rules for scale and color. These fantasy worlds explore the themes of memory, cultural histories, ecological anxieties and Central Asian femininity. Abuova also connected her traditional oil painting practice with digital imagery and digitally altered forms. Abuova has participated in group exhibitions at the Education Department of Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, and in the galleries at Cornell University.