Ivanka Garay

Born in Gatchina, Leningrad region.

Graduated from the Russian State University for the Humanities in historical comparative studies (Russia — Germany). A graduate of the Moscow School of Contemporary Art (MSCA, 2025). She studied at Larisa Zakharova's ARTBAZL studio (2020–2022) and at the Sculptart school of sculpture (2022–2024), and has held residencies including the Svody Centre for Artistic Production (GES-2, 2023), the Shelota wood-firing ceramic residency (2024) and the Zaraysk art residency (2025).

Her practice examines the position of the human being as a natural, biological creature in the context of rapidly advancing technology. She is concerned with how human nature is transformed by a technological environment, and with the mechanisms by which individual and collective emotion is expressed or suppressed in the process of adapting to new conditions.

Clay is one of her key materials — a symbol of the archaic, of what lies deep in a person and connects them to the earth and to earlier generations. Her work turns on the dichotomy of the contemporary and the archaic, examining their conflict and their interpenetration.

Depending on the project the emphasis shifts either to making an image through form, material, space, light and sound, or to the process itself as a value in its own right. She works in installation, ceramics and performance.