Sonja Yakovleva

Sonja Yakovleva, born in 1989 in Potsdam, Germany, is a contemporary artist based in Frankfurt am Main. She studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main and the Athens School of Fine Arts. As a member of the artist collective KVTV, she actively curates exhibitions and publishes projects.

Celebrated for her large-scale paper cutouts that explore themes of women’s power, sexuality, violence, and societal structures, Yakovleva uses pornographic imagery and internet visuals as templates to create intricate silhouettes that hybridize and sexualize traditional motifs from fairy tales and myths, challenging patriarchal and capitalist ideologies through her sex-positive feminist lens. Her work often features fetish-inspired forms rendered with symbolic complexity, recalling colonial expeditions and the capitalist impulse to categorize and commodify sexual identity. Yakovleva’s art has been exhibited widely across Europe in venues like Kunstraum Potsdam, Kunstpalais Erlangen, and the Klingspor Museum. Her 2023 solo exhibition Bestiaire d’Amour offered a powerful feminist reinterpretation of female bodies and agency.