Impressions of Film and Video: Art by Sonya Stefan
Jan/13/chor de, 16 mm (for Annuaire series)
Sonya Stefan is a video and media artist who creates impressions of film and video, often utilizing non-traditional or anachronistic techniques. Using the medium's inherent versatility of style, the artist maintains a collaborative, interactive practice.
LCD Teardown (installation view)
I find Sonya’s installation works quite interesting in relation to her overall body of work. In LCD Teardown, for example, the artist utilizes the hardware that makes film and video, creating a unique artwork that seems inextricably linked to film and video without focusing on it.
Sonya’s Low-Fi videos are a celebration of obsolete video techniques and the unique color saturation of artworks from decades past. Some are collaborative efforts, such as Annuaire, created by Sonya and artist and musician Alain Lefebvre. Similar works like Mystic Unicorn Earth Girl combine the aesthetics of 1980’s video animation and tropes of VHS production, slowly evolving into a distilled abstraction. Some of the more abstracted video clips remind me of works by Guillaume Vallee.
