© Courtesy of the artist, Dot Fiftyone Gallery
NOW, VOYAGER
In dialogue with Anastasia Samoylova
FVTVRIST Magazine // Art Basel Miami Beach 2025
18 January 2026
Presented during Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 at Dot Fiftyone Gallery, Now, Voyager introduces a new body of work by Anastasia Samoylova, revealed alongside the fair. In this series, photography and painting meet on a single surface, creating images that resist resolution and remain deliberately open.
In conversation with FVTVRIST, Anastasia speaks about the emergence of this body of work, her evolving relationship to medium, and the role of risk and process within a practice.
Portrait of Anastasia Samoylova. © Courtesy of the artist, Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Now, Voyager feels like a moment where you allowed yourself to break a rule, introducing paint into a practice long associated with precision and observation. Do you remember the first image where you knew photography alone was no longer enough?
I wouldn’t frame it as photography no longer being enough. That suggests a hierarchy I don’t subscribe to. The move toward painting wasn’t corrective. It was additive, in the sense of union rather than repair. I was interested in photography and painting operating simultaneously, as equal languages.
There wasn’t a single image that failed as a photograph and therefore needed paint. The impulse came from wanting the photographic surface to remain open, active, and responsive. Painting allowed the image to stay in process rather than settle into resolution. If this reads as a break, it’s likely because I’ve been known publicly as a photographer, but I’ve always resisted fixed medium boundaries. Now, Voyager isn’t about crossing a line. It’s about refusing to draw one.
Installation view, Now, Voyager. © Courtesy of the artist and Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Did painting over your own photographs ever feel uncomfortable or irreversible?
It didn’t feel uncomfortable. It felt subversive and liberating. I’ve grown weary of the rigidity of the photographic bubble, the unspoken rules suggesting the medium must remain sealed or risk betrayal. Painting over my own photographs was a way to push against that purity. I chose images that were already resolved and could withstand interruption. When a photograph felt stable enough to be challenged, that’s when it was ready. The gesture wasn’t about erasure or correction, but about opening the image to a different kind of life.
When you look at these works now, do they bring back specific moments, places, or emotions, or have the images become something entirely new for you?
They do both. The photographs still carry the temperature of specific places and times, but the act of painting has displaced them. What I see now is not memory in a literal sense, but a distilled emotional residue. The images have loosened from their origins and become autonomous.
How has painting changed your emotional relationship to the photographs you originally took?
Painting introduced touch and risk. Photography often keeps me at a calibrated distance. With paint, I am inside the image, making irreversible decisions. That shift created a more intimate and forgiving relationship with the work, less about control and more about listening.
Your earlier projects mapped landscapes, cities, and visual systems. Now, Voyager feels closer to the body and the self. Did making this series feel riskier for you?
Yes, it felt riskier. Earlier projects relied on systems and external frameworks. Now, Voyager removes that scaffolding and moves closer to vulnerability, intuition, and doubt, which felt exposed but necessary.
The way I apply paint is intuitive and unscripted. Drips and pours can’t be undone, so each gesture carries real consequence. That irreversibility introduces spontaneity and risk into the process, mirroring the way I work with the camera, responding in a fraction of a second to something fleeting or charged. In both cases, the work depends on attentiveness and trust rather than control.
Gerhard Richter is mentioned in relation to this exhibitions as a reference. What aspects of his practice were relevant for you?
For me, the relevance of Richter is almost inverse. In his work, photography is often something to be translated, obscured, or absorbed by painting. What interested me was recognizing that historical tension and deliberately moving in the opposite direction.
In Now, Voyager, photography is not a starting point to be overcome. The images are complete and central from the outset. Painting does not consume or dissolve them, but meets them as an equal. I wanted the photograph to remain present, legible, and resistant, even as paint introduces interruption, emotion, and temporality. If Richter questioned photographic authority, my response is to assert it differently, through sustained dialogue rather than dominance.
Installation view, Now, Voyager. © Courtesy of the artist and Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Many works balance beauty with unease. Do you see this tension as something personal, something political, or simply part of how you experience the world right now?
It is all three. Personal unease, political anxiety, and perceptual overload are inseparable for me right now. Beauty is never neutral, and unease is often its shadow.
During Art Basel Miami Beach, you were constantly moving between exhibition, museum talks, studio visits. How did you enjoy the experience this year?
This year felt intense but meaningful. I was moving constantly, yet more grounded. The conversations felt deeper, less transactional, more aligned with where I am in my practice.
Did you manage to walk Art Basel without appointments, without explanations, just looking?
Yes, briefly. Those moments are rare and precious. Walking without purpose reminded me why I fell in love with looking at art in the first place.
PAINTING OVER MY OWN PHOTOGRAPHS WAS A WAY TO PUSH AGAINST THAT PURITY, TO INSIST THAT PHOTOGRAPHY DOESN’T LOSE ITS INTEGRITY BY BEING IN CONVERSATION WITH ANOTHER MEDIUM.
Can you name the three most meaningful events or moments you experienced during this Art Basel Miami Beach, and briefly say why each one stood out for you?
My conversation with Elisa Turner at Art Basel Miami Beach was meaningful because it allowed for an honest, nuanced discussion about the current state of the Miami art scene. It felt reflective rather than promotional, grounded in history, change, and responsibility.
Installation view, Now, Voyager. © Courtesy of the artist and Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Installation view, Now, Voyager. © Courtesy of the artist and Dot Fiftyone Gallery
About Anastasia Samoylova
Anastasia Samoylova is an American artist working between observational photography and studio practice. Based in Miami since 2016, her work examines landscape, environment, and the visual systems through which ideology and vulnerability are rendered visible.
Her recent solo exhibition Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans was presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2024–2025). During Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, she presented Now, Voyager at Dot Fiftyone Gallery, marking a new phase in her practice through the integration of painting into photographic works.
Samoylova’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Saatchi Gallery, C/O Berlin, V&A Dundee, Fundación MAPFRE, and the George Eastman Museum. Her work is held in major public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Pérez Art Museum Miami. Her published monographs include FloodZone (2019), Floridas (2022), Image Cities (2023), and Adaptation (2024).
