Sofia Defino Leiby’s practice distills everyday consumerist landscapes into works that dissolve boundaries between two-dimensional media. Balancing on the edge between sincerity and irony, she casts scenes in a utopia-dystopia where desire and disgust do not contradict one another: advertisements and brand logos, impersonal markers of commercialism, exist alongside personal notes and mementos. Motifs are repeated and rehashed across a disparate but intertwined body of work: sometimes painted, sometimes printed, sometimes drawn, and sometimes collaged.

Leiby (*1989, United States) lives and works in Berlin. She has presented two solo exhibitions at Sweetwater, most recently in 2024. Her first institutional solo exhibition, High Noon at Kunstverein Nürnberg, opened in September 2025. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at Stiftung BINZ39, The Wig, and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. In 2023, her novel May Text was published by Bauer Verlag. Leiby received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2011 and studied at the Städelschule from 2018 to 2019.