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​​STATEMENT​​

Born in South Korea, raised in the Philippines, and now based in the UK, my painting practice is rooted in a desire to explore memory - particularly as they relate to identity, belonging, and migration. Working primarily from personal childhood photographs, I am drawn to the unexpected or overlooked, yet charged details in these images, what Roland Barthes calls the punctum, and defines as the emotional or disruptive element that punctures the frame. These discoveries are at the heart of my current work.

 

Painting directly from the photograph forming the basis of my creative process, I aim to capture something of the elusive and emergent nature of memory and recollections. I create fragments of intimate imagery that uses an active combination of the affects of both paint and photograph, conjuring uncanny familiarity and feelings of displacement.

 

My work explores themes of loss, longing, and the fragmented memories that often accompany a history of migration. Influenced by the material practices of painters in the 1960s New Figuration movement, I have developed a process of cropping, glazing, layering, and masking that reflects subtle, textural surfaces where meaning emerges through material complexity as the layering of materials come through to the surface in unexpected ways.

 

Painting is, for me, a poetic and intuitive practice: slow, open to chance, and deeply embodied. It allows me to interrogate and reframe personal narratives of memory not as linear or fixed, but as relational and impressionistic – alive to context, sensation, and environment. In doing so, I open up space for exploring more fluid, and layered new realities that speak to broader questions of identity and belonging.

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BIOGRAPHY​

Sophia Rosenthal (b.1996, Seoul) graduated from MA Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2024, and was awarded the Standpoint Artist Residency Prize,  culminating in her first solo show in London in March 2025. 

 

Shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, Sophia won the inaugural Judith Tucker Memorial Prize, selected by Lubaina Himid, Griselda Pollock and Harriet Tarlo, as well as The Blyth Gallery Award to exhibit a solo show at Imperial College in 2026.

 

Sophia has exhibited widely in the UK and Northern Ireland, and was an artist resident at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives (2018), and at the Museum of Loss and Renewal in Collemacchia, Italy (2023).  ​​For more information on past and present shows visit the CV page.

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For inquiries contact: sophiaxrosenthal@gmail.com

If you would like to hear more about upcoming shows or projects follow @sophiaxrosenthal on Instagram​​