Performance artist Maria Saukhina transforms aerial silks from her long-term acrobatic practice into a live visual artwork in “Becoming Image”, a new London-based performance project.
At the centre of the project is the idea of something that once supported the body gradually becoming restrictive. During the live performance, suspended fabric structures shift from movement and support into pressure, entanglement and physical limitation, turning the action into a reflection on emotional dependence, control and the difficulty of existing within larger social and psychological systems.
Maria Saukhina will also present a series of works incorporating aerial fabrics used throughout years of live performances. Cut, stretched and physically embedded into the pieces, the materials become part of the project’s reflection on pressure, control and the individual within larger social systems.
Alongside the performance, the project includes collaborative visual works by London-based artist Olga Regina, whose practice combines photography, digital image-making and fragmented visual narratives. Regina, whose works have previously been exhibited in the UK and internationally, has chosen not to reveal in advance which works will appear as part of the presentation. Brought together specially within the context of “Becoming Image”, the selected works reflect on self-perception, observation and the emotional pressure of existing within socially constructed identities.
Through fragmented figures and digitally transformed imagery, the works examine the tension between the way people see themselves and the image they feel expected to perform within contemporary social environments.
“Becoming Image” will be presented on 23 May 2026 at the National Centre for Circus Arts in London in a closed artist-led format for invited curators and media.
Maria Saukhina is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, painting, photography and visual art. At the centre of her practice is the body as a carrier of memory, internal tension and lived experience.
Combining live performance with studio practice, Saukhina explores vulnerability, resistance, dependence and transformation through movement, material trace and image. Her artistic approach has also been shaped by the study of psychology, informing the way emotions, memory and inner conflict surface through the body and acquire physical form within her work.
Olga Regina is an artist working across photography, digital image making and mixed media. Her practice explores memory, perception and transformed visual environments. Working between observation and visual intervention, Regina combines photographic elements with digital manipulation and hand made details, creating psychologically charged visual spaces shaped by memory, fragmentation and lived experience.
In April 2026, Olga Regina presented her solo exhibition Memory of a New City at Brady Arts & Community Centre in Whitechapel, London, exploring the emotional landscape of East London through digitally transformed urban imagery. The exhibition received coverage in London media. Regina has previously participated in exhibitions and contemporary art projects in the UK and internationally.