DIRECTORY 2025

Rita Evs | Collage, Painting

 Rita Evs (b. 1988, Tomsk, Russia) is an emerging artist based in Berlin whose practice explores themes of fragility, trauma, and the concept of home within a multicultural context. Having lived in Belgium and Luxembourg before settling in Germany, Rita draws on her diverse experiences to inform her work. Primarily focused on collage blended with graphics and painting, her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private collections across Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Germany.

Rita's artistic exploration is deeply rooted in the awareness of her own fragility, a state of frozen stillness shaped by trauma encountered throughout her nomadic journey. She investigates the concept of "home" as an emotional refuge, navigating the challenges of adapting to new environments and finding personal identity in a multicultural landscape.

Drawing on Viktor Shklovsky's technique of defamiliarization, Rita reframes familiar experiences to disrupt automatic perception. This approach creates an immersive space that confronts uncomfortable truths, inviting complexity, discomfort, and unfiltered expression, thereby fostering a deeper engagement with the unexpected. Collage serves as the foundation of Rita's practice, celebrated for its inherent heterogeneity. She merges collage with graphics and integrates it into painting, experimenting with various materials to expand artistic expression. By combining abstract and figurative elements, Rita's work becomes a space where fragility and resilience coexist, encouraging viewers to pause, reflect, and perceive the familiar as profoundly new.

@rittingale