Most of my work begins with a moment of recognition that feels slightly off. Something familiar is there, but it doesn’t quite align. A face, a gesture, a structure, a material. That small shift becomes a starting point.
I work across sculpture, painting, and installation, using hand-worked glass, clear plastic from discarded containers, and paper. These materials behave differently, but they often meet at the surface. Plastic can imitate glass. Glass carries the weight of history. Their contact produces a kind of agreement that never fully settles.
The work develops through several bodies, each circling this tension. In some, faces and figures emerge through layered materials, where identity feels assembled. In others, fragments come together without a stable structure, held by proximity and pressure. There are also environments where scale changes the experience, placing the viewer inside systems that suggest growth, containment, or quiet collapse.
I am drawn to how people construct themselves over time. Fragments accumulate through memory, imitation, and encounter. Some feel essential, others provisional, but all contribute to a personal structure that keeps adjusting. The work follows these processes as parallel constructions.
Historical references, especially from medieval stained glass, enter as points of contact. They carry a record of how expression has been shaped and preserved. Placed alongside contemporary materials like plastic, they open a gap between endurance and immediacy, between what is meant to last and what passes through unnoticed.
These differences remain active in the work. Meaning forms through proximity, misalignment, and substitution. What appears stable often depends on small conditions that can shift.
BIO
Sasha Zhitneva is an artist working between Pennsylvania and New York in sculpture, painting, and installation. She combines hand-worked glass with clear plastic and paper, bringing historical references into contact with contemporary materials. The work produces moments of recognition that remain slightly out of place.
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