By: Shawn Mars
Interviewer: Your project is called One Dimensional Woman. What does that title mean?
Anna Koyn: The title comes from Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, a book that examines how modern societies create conformity through comfort, consumption, and manufactured needs. I became interested in what that idea looks like through the figure of the contemporary woman. Not as a criticism of women, but as a way of examining how identity is shaped by systems that present themselves as freedom.
Interviewer: Many of your works focus on consumption. Why?
Anna Koyn: Because consumption has become one of the primary languages through which we understand ourselves. We don’t simply buy products anymore. We buy identities, lifestyles, values, and aspirations. The shopping cart has become a psychological portrait.
Interviewer: Your work often references consent. What interests you about that idea?
Anna Koyn: I’m interested in forms of control that don’t feel like control. Historically, power was often visible and direct. Today it frequently appears as care, convenience, self-improvement, and personal choice. My work examines the moment when people willingly participate in systems that shape their behavior while believing they are acting completely independently.
Interviewer: Is One-Dimensional Woman a feminist project?
Anna Koyn: It begins with the image of a woman, but it is ultimately about everyone. The female figure serves as a lens through which broader questions about identity, desire, and social conditioning can be explored. The project asks what remains of individuality when so much of our behavior is predicted, encouraged, and rewarded by external systems.
Interviewer: You work across video, installation, photography, and mixed media. Why use so many different forms?
Anna Koyn: Because the project itself is larger than any single medium. I think of One Dimensional Woman as a conceptual ecosystem. Each work functions as part of a larger investigation. Whether I am using receipts, packaging, video, legal language, or wellness products, the goal is always the same: to reveal structures that are usually invisible.
Interviewer: One of your best-known works is Social Prenup. What inspired it?
Anna Koyn: I became fascinated by the idea that participation in contemporary society resembles a contract that has already been signed before it has been read. We inherit expectations about success, beauty, productivity, and happiness. We rarely stop to ask who wrote those terms. Social Prenup turns that question into a visual and performative experience.
Interviewer: What role does philosophy play in your practice?
Anna Koyn: Philosophy provides the framework, but art allows those ideas to become experiential. I am influenced by thinkers such as Marcuse and Foucault because they help explain how power operates through culture. My goal is not to illustrate theory but to create situations where viewers can encounter these questions directly.
Interviewer: Your work has recently gained international attention. What comes next?
Anna Koyn: In 2026, my work was selected for Platforms Project in Athens and Fresh Legs in Berlin, and I am preparing for participation in the Florence Biennale. I am also continuing to develop the project alongside curator Julia Sysalova. What excites me most is not any individual exhibition but the possibility of expanding One Dimensional Woman into an increasingly complex body of work.
Interviewer: What question do you hope visitors leave with after experiencing your work?
Anna Koyn: A simple one: Which of my choices are truly mine?
