Elya Akateva

Elya Akateva (1992, Russia) is a visual artist and graphic designer based in London. She previously worked at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow and is currently developing independent projects at the intersection of graphic design and art. Central to Elya’s practice is the poster, approached as an autonomous artistic medium and a “container of thought.” Her projects often unfold in digital environments, which she sees as spaces for archiving incidental artifacts. She defines her practice as Speculative Abstract (Graphic) (Design) (Art), a framework grounded in play, incompleteness, and the observation of how visual and textual fragments acquire new meaning when removed from their original context. Elya’s key bodies of work encompass four strands: Neo-Cubism 21 is an archive of digital behavior documented via Instagram Stories. Unpredictable Graphics (UG) and \/\/ords serve as ongoing repositories of visual and textual debris (graphic junk). Together they explore the aesthetics of chance and the phenomenon of digital memory that emerges beyond authorial control, becoming artistic objects. Linguistic Graphics (lingphx) experiments with letters and words, destabilizing conventional linguistic structures and shifting the boundaries of language.