Anastasia Sosunova. Crossover
Curated by Chiara Nuzzi
 

Anastasia Sosunova (Lithuania, 1993) presents her interdisciplinary practice for the first time in an Italian institution through her solo exhi- bition Crossover, curated by Chiara Nuzzi and installed in the project room of Fondazione ICA Milano.

On view from Thursday, 20 November 2025, to Saturday, 7 March 2026, the exhibition gathers videos, sculptures, and installations created between 2022 and 2025; works which reveal the artist’s gaze on our time through the lens of local traditions, autobiographical experiences, and popular beliefs.

The works of Sosunova are situated at the intersection of art, anthropology, and ethnography: by focusing on the reworking of over-coded stories and seemingly insignificant personal episodes, the artist shapes new signs that carry different narratives, often in contrast with official history.

Curator Chiara Nuzzi explains: “Interested in the ability of religious and enigmatic beliefs to shape the behavior of individuals and communities, through printmaking, sculpture, and video the artist celebrates the shifts in mea- ning that artifacts undergo due to collective agreements, folkloric beliefs, or parasocial relationships.”

The title Crossover refers to the encounter or overlap between two or more different elements that the artist, through her practice, reworks, reclaims, and reinvents, giving them new collective meanings. Sosunova layers and distorts images, objects, and materials full of meanings, drawing viewers’ attention to the ways in which notions of tradition and ritual are regularly manipulated to reinforce authority and codified narratives.

In the exhibition the public encounters a group of works across different media, beginning with the AB Prints (2023), featuring images extracted by the artist from an auction catalogue of art and antiques destined for the Western market, later isolated and printed individually as a gesture of identity-based resistance in an era of political censorship. Chiara Nuzzi continues: “Sosunova’s prints produce a conceptual shift that explores, on the one hand, the modes of circulation of heritage and value, and on the other, the ways images themselves are disseminated and decontextualized, revealing how they can be redirected toward new systems of meaning.”

The sculptures A light bulb and a chestnut and A sock, both produced in 2025, are the result of assembling various objects collected by the artist over the years, which appear to viewers as testimonies of political events of the past or of beliefs connected with the history of Lithuania.

Among the works on display, Anastasia Sosunova presents the video Xover (2025), created in the format of fan fiction. Images of the Harmony Park SPA resort and Senukai hardware stores, sounds, and recorded voices alternate to compose a visual landscape between reality and imagination, an ambiguous and sacred space for meditating on the concepts of love, fanaticism, hope, and melancholy.

The site-specific installation Express Method (2022–2025)—consisting of a water-filled canister supported by crates containing empty Sprite bottles—takes as a starting point the Orthodox tradition happening on the night of January 18, during which the faithful celebrate Epiphany by jumping into frozen rivers and lakes, taking cold showers, and filling all containers with reconsecrate the water. Starting from January 18, 2026 the public of the show will also be able to fill the empty Sprite bottles with the water in the displayed tank and take them away as a purification ritual.

The artist explains: “The works on view appear as ‘impossible survival assemblages’ resulting from the fusion of techniques, materials, iconographies, and consequently social norms that do not usually coexist. In my art I tran- sform memory into modern history to imagine the future of humankind. I deconstruct stories to build new ones, constantly questioning the authority that defines an identity and the au- thenticity of a group.”

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ANASTASIA SOSUNOVA

Anastasia Sosunova (Ignalina, 1993) is a visual artist based in Vilnius. Her practice, combining video, installation, printmaking, and sculpture, focuses on the multiple connections between signs and fate in a secular society, exploring manifestations of magical thinking and the dynamics of community mobilization. Her works address themes related to the coexistence of seemingly incompatible value systems, tracing alternative forms of contemporary folklore. Sosunova graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a BA in Graphic Arts and an MA in Sculpture. Her work has been featured in numerous biennials and group exhibitions, including the 15th Gwangju Biennale, the 17th Lyon Biennale, KADIST, and the Palais de Tokyo. Her solo and duo exhibitions have been presented in international institutions such as Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Riga), KOHTA Kunsthalle (Helsinki), Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius), Galeria Arsenał (Białystok), and Cell Project Space (London).

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Fondazione ICA Milano wishes to thank Intesa Sanpaolo, official sponsor of the Foundation, and Valsoia for their support of ICA Milano’s programs and activities.

Fondazione ICA Milano thanks eastcontemporary, Milan and the Lithuanian Culture Institute for their support on the occasion of the exhibition Anastasia Sosunova. Crossover. The project is part of the 2025–2026 Lithuanian Culture in Italy program, implemented by the Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Italy.

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Digital Experience – PARTICLE

Explore the new exhibitions at Fondazione ICA Milano with the Particle app and access exclusive content and in-depth insights. Available in both Italian and English, this digital experience offers an immersive journey through the works, themes, and key figures of each exhibition, with interviews, behind-the-scenes content, and much more. particle.art/x/Fondazione-ICA-Milano/Digital-Level