Ida Sophia

Ida Sophia uses the body to render performative works in various materials. Working from personal experiences, she investigates uncomfortable states within our human experience – based on the premise that representational pain in art is essential for the viewer to reflect on, process and evaluate within our faculty of reason, will and belief.

Witness is informed by her childhood experience of seeing her father’s baptism, a profound event for both – he for its religious meaning, she for the belief that he loved Jesus more than her. The repetitive and intense submergence and uplifting takes a single baptism to a level of relentless obsession. It suggests how actions of vain hope can be gruelling, violent and futile, for participant and witness alike.