Lina Iris Viktor

Lina Iris Viktor is a Liberian-British conceptual artist, painter, and performance artist whose practice draws on a range of influences, including African symbolism from ancient Egypt and contemporary Mali, among other places, classical astronomy, and European portraiture. Viktor’s canvases can be described as “light-works”, often using a limited palette of white, black, and gold. The use of gold relates to Mesoamerican and Egyptian cultures – gold as a conduit between worlds, summoning spiritual transcendence. Viktor describes herself as a “neophyte student of Astrology”, considering symbols of cosmology, and elements of mysticism, mathematics, and celestial arrangements within her paintings.

Viktor studied at Sarah Lawrence College and the School of Visual Art in New York. She currently lives and works in Italy. Recently, Viktor was included in In the Black Fantastic, a group exhibition that debuted at the Hayward Gallery in London, and traveled to the Kunsthal Rotterdam. Her institutional solo exhibitions include those at the New Orleans Museum of Art (2018); Autograph, London (2019); and Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm (2020), as well as inclusion in important group presentations such as

Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House, London (2019) and In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery, London (2022). Her work can be found in the collections of Autograph, London; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; and Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC.