Roma Soyerov
Interdisciplinary artist exploring the logic of perception and engineered emotion
Roma Soyerov is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tashkent, working across painting, ceramics, wood, and augmented reality within a metamodernist logic: sincere oscillation between control and chance. He started in street art, studied structural engineering at university while continuing to paint, and later moved fully into studio practice. He builds works as layered systems: an image made for immediate attention, concealing a second layer, sometimes activated through AR, that opens only to a viewer willing to look twice.
His solo exhibition PROPAGANDA (Ilkhom Theatre, Tashkent, 2025) used generative-video tools to reveal a hidden scene of manipulation disguised as care; audiences preferred the concealed surface to the truth beneath it. His work is held in private collections in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
Look twice. Read the full bio →
His solo exhibition PROPAGANDA (Ilkhom Theatre, Tashkent, 2025) used generative-video tools to reveal a hidden scene of manipulation disguised as care; audiences preferred the concealed surface to the truth beneath it. His work is held in private collections in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
Look twice. Read the full bio →
My practice moves between two states rather than settling on one: an image built to catch the eye immediately, and a second layer, hidden, sometimes literal, that opens only to someone willing to look twice.
In Zhazhda, from the PROPAGANDA series, a figurative scene of a border rescue sits beneath an abstract painted surface, invisible until a phone reveals it through AR. Once concealed, the painting became the most visited work in the show. Audiences chose the beautiful surface over the disturbing truth beneath it, without knowing they'd made that choice.
I build each piece as a system of sequential reading: what a viewer notices first, what slips past, what pulls them back. I set the conditions. The viewer completes them. That distrust of a beautiful surface comes from a post-Soviet visual culture, where a polished facade over an uncomfortable reality is ordinary, not exceptional. I trained as a structural engineer before I trained as a painter. That discipline still shapes how I build.
I work across painting, ceramics, wood, and augmented reality. The question underneath is always the same: what remains when a bond is torn, and can what's left become something larger than the whole ever was.
Look twice. Read the full statement →
In Zhazhda, from the PROPAGANDA series, a figurative scene of a border rescue sits beneath an abstract painted surface, invisible until a phone reveals it through AR. Once concealed, the painting became the most visited work in the show. Audiences chose the beautiful surface over the disturbing truth beneath it, without knowing they'd made that choice.
I build each piece as a system of sequential reading: what a viewer notices first, what slips past, what pulls them back. I set the conditions. The viewer completes them. That distrust of a beautiful surface comes from a post-Soviet visual culture, where a polished facade over an uncomfortable reality is ordinary, not exceptional. I trained as a structural engineer before I trained as a painter. That discipline still shapes how I build.
I work across painting, ceramics, wood, and augmented reality. The question underneath is always the same: what remains when a bond is torn, and can what's left become something larger than the whole ever was.
Look twice. Read the full statement →
2026 · Memory remains · De Balie · Amsterdam · Netherlands
2026 · WE SPEAK 2 · Cultura · Tashkent · Uzbekistan
2026 · Prometheus Art Weekend · INTAMT · Düsseldorf · Germany
2025 · WE SPEAK (artist-led group exhibition) · Art Station Gallery · Samarkand · Uzbekistan
2025 · PROPAGANDA (solo) · Ilkhom Theatre · Tashkent · Uzbekistan
2025 · VIRUS · De Balie · Amsterdam · Netherlands
2024 · AFTER SHOCK REVIVAL · Iceberg Gallery · Berlin · Germany
2024 · AFTER SHOCK · Vrij Paleis Gallery · Amsterdam · Netherlands
2023 · SVIVA Station (site-specific) · Sviva Art Space · Tel Aviv · Israel
2023 · Jump To Nowhere · Sisters Room Space · Tbilisi · Georgia
2022 · Perevorot (traveling exhibition) · New York · Moscow · Prague · Saint Petersburg · Yerevan
2026 · WE SPEAK 2 · Cultura · Tashkent · Uzbekistan
2026 · Prometheus Art Weekend · INTAMT · Düsseldorf · Germany
2025 · WE SPEAK (artist-led group exhibition) · Art Station Gallery · Samarkand · Uzbekistan
2025 · PROPAGANDA (solo) · Ilkhom Theatre · Tashkent · Uzbekistan
2025 · VIRUS · De Balie · Amsterdam · Netherlands
2024 · AFTER SHOCK REVIVAL · Iceberg Gallery · Berlin · Germany
2024 · AFTER SHOCK · Vrij Paleis Gallery · Amsterdam · Netherlands
2023 · SVIVA Station (site-specific) · Sviva Art Space · Tel Aviv · Israel
2023 · Jump To Nowhere · Sisters Room Space · Tbilisi · Georgia
2022 · Perevorot (traveling exhibition) · New York · Moscow · Prague · Saint Petersburg · Yerevan
Selected artworks
A working self-checkout. Scan groceries, print a receipt. It isn't what it looks like.
A man carries something blue across his shoulders. Half the canvas has been erased to hide what it is.