Tania Antoshina

Antoshina's work gained prominence through projects such as Museum of a Woman, My Favorite Artists, Europe, Space Travelers, Blue Cities, Space Ark, Cold Land. Her artistic practice is examined within the context of feminist discourse, post-socialist identity, and contemporary interpretations of 20th-century utopian projects. In 2015, Antoshina represented the Republic of Mauritius at the 56th Venice Biennale. Her works are held in public and private collections including the American University Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, MUMOK, the State Russian Museum, the New Museum Weserburg Bremen, and others.

Tania Antoshina studied at Dmitri Hvorostovsky Siberian State Institute of Arts and Stroganov Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry. The recorded working language is Russian. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Distinctions recorded are VDNKh silver medal.

• Name — Tania Antoshina • Birth Name — Татьяна Константиновна Антошина • Born — 1 May 1956 • Birthplace — Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union • Education — PhD Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry • Style — Installation art, conceptual art, feminist art • Known for — Feminist art, Contemporary art, Installation art, Visual artist, Sculpture, Ceramics, Photography, Video art • Notable Works — Museum of a Woman, My Favorite Artists, Europe, Space Travelers, Blue Cities, Space Ark, Cold Land • Movement — Post-Soviet art, Eastern European feminist art • Father — Konstantin Fokich Antoshin (1924–1990) • Mother — Raisa Sergeevna Nosova (1928–2020) • Website — https: antoshina.com

Antoshina was born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, into an academic family. Her father, Konstantin Fokich Antoshin (1924–1990), was a literary scholar specializing in the literatures of Siberia and one of the first Doctors of Sciences in Khakassia. Her mother, Raisa Sergeevna Nosova (1928–2020), was a physicist, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and university lecturer. The intellectual environment in which Antoshina grew up combined the humanities and the sciences and contributed to her lifelong interest in knowledge, memory, cultural transmission and the history of ideas. From 1974 to 1978, she attended at the Krasnoyarsk Art College. Between 1979 and 1983 she studied sculpture and ceramics at the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Arts. In 1987 she entered the Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry, where in 1991 she defended her dissertation on the topic "Primitive ceramics as an artistic and aesthetic phenomenon (based on materials from South Siberian antiquities)" and received a candidate of science degree, equivalent to a doctorate, in art history.

• Illustration — Tania Antoshina, ceramic sculpture Animal Festival, 1992 Antoshina emerged on the Moscow contemporary art scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Early projects were associated with conceptual and post-conceptual artistic circles and included collaborations with Yuri Leiderman and Andrei Monastyrski, other representatives of the post-Soviet artistic milieu. Some works from this period were exhibited under the names Tatiana Mashukova and Tatiana Mashukova-Antoshina.

• Illustration — Tania Antoshina, stage photo The Oath, from series Museum of a Woman, 2000 One of the central directions of her work has been the reimagining of the role of women in the history of art and culture. The most prominent project of this period is Museum of a woman, in which the artist engages with masterpieces of European art, reversing traditional gender roles. This series of staged photographs reimagines canonical images from European art history through feminist inversion and gender critique. This project is widely regarded by researchers as a significant artistic interpretation of feminist discourse within post-Soviet art. Brian Dillon wrote in Modern Painters (magazine) that Antoshina's meticulously staged photographs create a deliberate bodily ambiguity, blurring fixed distinctions between male and female representation.

• Illustration — Tania Antoshina, ceramic sculpture Eltsyn, Come Out!, 2000 The main character of this sculptural series is a performing artist Alexander Brener.

• Illustration — Tania Antoshina, red wine fountain The Star. Marina Abramovic, 2008 In the early 2000s, Antoshina released a series of ceramic sculptures, "My Favorite Artists," featuring performance artists. Antoshina achieves an unusual transformation of performance into ceramic sculpture, preserving ephemeral artistic actions in a durable medium. Antoshina resolved, as was demanded by the small scale, the basic problem a sculptor (or photographer) is confronted with: to “catch” a movement of the human body and “freeze” it for posterity. This is the “pregnant moment” which both Lessing and Cartier-Bresson found for sculpture and photography, respectively.

• Illustration — Tania Antoshina, Picture N6 from the project Space Travellers, 2006 Themes of flight, cosmism and utopian imagination have occupied a central place in Antoshina's work since the mid-1980s. Projects such as Space Travelers, Europe, Blue Cities, Telepathy and Space Ark explore the legacy of Russian cosmism, Soviet visions of the future and broader questions concerning humanity's place in the universe. • Illustration — Tania Antoshina, installation Blue Cities, 2011 Curator and art historian Vitaly Patsyukov interpreted Antoshina's installation Space Travelers as a contemporary artistic continuation of cosmist thought, emphasizing flight, weightlessness and intellectual freedom. • Illustration — Tania Antoshina, ceramic sculpture Fish-Beast, from series Bestiary, from project Space Ark, 2018 Writing about the exhibition Space Ark, art critic Alexey Tarkhanov described Antoshina's artistic practice as a synthesis of mythology, memory and cosmic imagination, in which individual experience becomes part of a larger cultural narrative.

Since the 2010s memory, exile and cultural transmission have become central concerns of Antoshina's work. Her long-term project Cold Land (Russian: Холодная Земля; French: À la lumière des ténèbres) examines Siberia as both a geographical and metaphysical territory. Combining autobiography, historical research and installation, the project focuses on scientists, intellectuals, artists and European exiles whose lives became intertwined with Siberian history. In the installations "Mathematics Teacher," "Couturier," "Maestro Quesnel," «Fete» and "Road," as well as in the objects "Suitcase," "Permafrost," and the fountain "Voltaire" real events, archetypal images, myths, and utopia are intertwined.

Selected solo and group exhibitions include: • À la lumière des ténèbres. Les Français en exil. Cold Land, Galerie Vallois, Paris, 2026; • 26 International Biennale of Vallauris – Contemporary Creation and Ceramics, Musée Magnelli, Musée de la céramique, Vallauris, France; • Sky is my land, L-Galerie, Paris, 2023; • Space Ark, Galerie Vallois, Paris, 2023; • Moves Like Walter: New Curators Open the Corcoran Legacy Collection, American University Museum, Washington, D.C., 2019; • ART RIOT: Post-Soviet Actionism, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2017; • This Leads to Fire: From Nonconformism to Global Capitalism, Neuberger Museum of Art, New York, 2014–2015; • 56th Venice Biennale, Mauritius Pavilion, Venice, 2015; • ŽEN d’ART Gender History of Art in the Post-Soviet Space: 1989–2009 Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Petrovka 25, Moscow, 2010; • Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, MUMOK, Vienna, 2009–2010; • After the Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 1999–2001; • The Hound of Baskerville (with Yuri Leiderman), Regina Gallery, Moscow, 1992.

• DIALOGUES together with Maaike Leyn, Studio Albatros, Montreuil, Paris, 2025; • OUI, FONTAINE! Studio Albatros, Montreuil, Paris, 2024; • THE QUEST OF THE POWER Exhibition is a participant of 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art Special program A3 Gallery, Moscow, 2015; • TERRA INCOGNITA Expedition to South Siberia for collection of ethnic and cultural material Khakassia - Tyva - Khakassia, 2014; • Kosmos as Presence - V5 Russian-German Art-Convention_together with A. Galenz and G. Kuznetsov InteriorDAsein, Berlin, 2012; • SONS OF THE GREAT BEAR together with G. Kuznetsov, Art Festival dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the first manned mission into space, PROEKT_FABRIКА art center, Hall Gruntovalnoy Machiny, Moscow, 2011; • 3 EUROPEAN TRIENNIAL OF SMALL SCULPTURES together with Katia Baudin-Reneau (Strasbourg),Prof. Bruno Corá (Florence/La Spezia), Prof. Dr. Thomas Deecke (Berlin), Dr. Andreas Hapkemeyer (Bozen), Dr. Ulrich Loock / Ricardo Nicolau (Porto), Mag. Franc Obal (Murska Sobota), David Thorp (London), Dr. Margit Zuckriegl (Salzburg), Galerija Murska Sobota, Murska Sobota, Slovenia, 2008; • TWO MUSEUM together with G. Vysheslavsky, Ciampino, Velletri, Italy, 1993.

Antoshina has been identified in publications and exhibition catalogues under several name variants, including Tania Antoshina, Tatiana Antoshina, Tatyana Antoshina, Tanya Antoshina, Tatjana Antošina, Tatjana Antoschina, Tatiana Konstantinovna Antoshina, Tatiana Mashukova and Tatiana Mashukova-Antoshina. Since the 2000s she has primarily used the professional name Tania Antoshina in international exhibitions, publications and institutional contexts.