Artist Name: Sophia Bakos
Residency Dates: February – April 2024
Born: 1999
Hometown: Mississauga, Canada
Lives & Works: Vancouver, Canada
URL: https://sophiabakos.squarespace.com | Instagram: @kinky.plush
Education: 2018 – 2022 | Bachelor’s in Studio Arts at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
Bio/Statement:
Sophia Bakos is a Vancouver based multidisciplinary artist who completed her bachelor’s degree with Distinction in Studio Arts at Concordia University in 2022. For the past year, Bakos has worked solely in contribution to her textile/photographic series entitled AMATEUR. The series speaks to Bakos’ experiences with sexual harm through combination of analog portraiture and various textile mediums such as needle felting and hand-sewing. Bakos’ textile work is an extension of herself, in that she incorporates her likeness or an element of her person in each piece. Feminine colours and textures are utilized to represent the sweetness of girlhood, though this sweetness is steeped in sullied memories of late adolescence.
Bakos’ AMATEUR saw its first public debut in 2021 at Gallery George in Vancouver, B.C for the annual Parker Art Salon, and has since been displayed as an installation at the 2022 East Side Culture Crawl for three consecutive years. Individual pieces from the series have also been exhibited, the most recent being with The ShockBoxx Gallery’s 2023 exhibition of Not An Art Fair in Hermosa Beach California, and with Hera’s Gallery’s virtual show, Girl Art Now in 2024. The AMATEUR series saw its first solo exhibition in September 2023 at Vancouver’s James Black Gallery. In early 2024, Bakos will participate in the multi-city erotic exhibition entitled A Hot Minute, which takes place in three Galleries across Canada: Gallery Merrick in Victoria B.C, Ashdale Gallery in North Vancouver, B.C, and Christine Klassen Gallery in Calgary, Alberta.
