About Me

My name is Sophia Kingsbury.

I was born in Aarhus, Denmark in 1996 to Lesley Holst and Jonathan Kingsbury. My mother is Danish, my father is from New Zealand. I have no memory of living in either country, having instead been raised in Malawi and Mozambique over 15 years.

I dread having to answer the question “where are you from?” because the answer is never simple. I have come to realise that I invariably introduce myself in Denmark as being New Zealander, and in New Zealand as being Danish. Perhaps this stems from a feeling of otherness – without a connection to the country through childhood or experience, introducing myself as being either New Zealander or Danish to someone ‘truly’ from that country feels like a lie.

A favourite quote of mine by Walt Whitman:

 “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

I feel like a glorious mess of contradiction. My interests are looking up cheap tickets that I’m never going to buy to Espirito Santo and San Diego and Bangkok and Kyoto, and learning languages just in case I go. I like the tuatara statue on Cuba Street that looks like it just received a compliment. I hope to one day meet Paul Tobin even if it means running into him at the supermarket, to ascertain that that degree of artistic prowess can exist in mortal form.

I am curious about the stories that surround artistic production; what prompted the artist to create the works, what about their lives formed their opinions and histories which are reflected in their artistic processes. The stories in the artworks themselves fascinate me, which is why I hold clear preference for otherworldly scenes and creatures in artworks – from the depictions of mythological subjects in oils by J. M. W. Turner to modern day concept art for film and video games.