Svetlana Arefiev (b. 1966, Russia) is a contemporary painter and art restorer based in France since 1994. After a career dedicated to the conservation of French cultural heritage, she has since devoted herself to an artistic practice that explores memory,...
Read MoreSvetlana Arefiev (b. 1966, Russia) is a contemporary painter and art restorer based in France since 1994. After a career dedicated to the conservation of French cultural heritage, she has since devoted herself to an artistic practice that explores memory, transformation, and the traces of time. Drawing deeply from Renaissance painting and the material history of artworks, her practice involves creating richly layered surfaces in which delicate textures and organic forms evoke the tension between human fragility and resilience.
Her recent series, Pulsation, transforms surgical drawings of vascular pathways into poetic visual compositions. Echoing the branching structure of trees, these intricate networks draw a direct parallel between the systems that oxygenate the Earth and those that sustain the human body. Ultimately, the series is a study of interconnectedness, healing, and the regenerative forces shared by nature and humanity.
Arefiev has exhibited extensively in France and internationally, including at Art Capital, the Salon d'Automne, Figuration Critique, WOPART (Switzerland), the National Art Center Tokyo (Japan), and the St. Petersburg Museum of Contemporary Art (Russia). She received the Jury Prize at Lyon Art Paper (2021) and the Miroir de l'Art Prize at Biennale 109 (2023), and has been invited as Guest of Honour at several contemporary art exhibitions and biennials in France.
