Yana Karol

Ceramic Artist, Writer & Researcher

de l’espace à la terre

Artist Statement

I am building a ceramic sculpture practice between Vallauris and Grasse, in a place where clay, craft, and modernist experimentation are part of the local landscape.

My work grows out of a long relationship with space: first as a physicist studying the Earth’s atmosphere through satellite imagery, later through writing and research on how the cosmos has been imagined and represented. I am now bringing that attention back to earth, into clay, structure, rhythm, and form.

I am interested in ceramics not as a functional medium, but as a sculptural and architectural material. My current work develops through modular construction, systems of assembly, repeated elements, and the tension between individual parts and larger compositions. The language is still emerging through making and testing.

I hold a PhD in Physics, a Bachelor's degree in Art History, and an MBA. These backgrounds do not appear in the work as direct subjects, but they shape how I think: through observation, precision, systems, histories, and the slow construction of meaning. I am also President of Synterval Foundation, which supports interdisciplinary cultural and intellectual work.

A quiet ceramic form on a warm stone surface with a muted blue-grey circular shadow. — Material practice in development, Vallauris and Grasse.

Space in Frames

Space in Frames explores how humanity has imagined, represented, and visualized the cosmos across history, from scientific images and cultural artifacts to the visual language of wonder, distance, and discovery.

Visit Space in Frames

Talks & Media

Yana is available for lectures, podcasts, interviews, public conversations, and media appearances on space imagery, visual culture, interdisciplinary research, and artistic practice.