Sofia Kavlin
Strategic designer and maker creating transformative connections through narrative and art. I specialize in storytelling and participatory design to foster cultural shifts and drive social impact. Based in New York City, I collaborate with organizations and communities to craft programs and spaces where meaningful change and innovation can thrive.
Project Gallery
WNDRLND (2023) is a co-designed alternate reality scavenger hunt based on the Lower East Side's Puerto Rican heritage. It uses a collaborative map (QGIS and Felt) as an interface to mediate between players' movements and the community garden network of “Loisada“.
The Unlearning Project (2021 - present) is a collection of poems and essays centering on the exploration of “Old Beliefs” and "Reframes”. Drawing inspiration from Henri Bergson’s notion of “infraordinary,“ the purpose of this narrative change sequence is to render the ordinary strange again.
TimeTable (2023) is a temporary urban installation using plywood and oak. Timetables say something specific about our cultural attitudes towards time — the contraction of time and space for production purposes. It evokes the mechanization of society during the industrial revolution. This wonky timetable plays into the idea that time is first and foremost, an experience - and, therefore, subject to variations depending on context and quality of attention.
Slow matter.s was a pop-up performance series taking place from June to September 2023 in New York City. We curated Lo-Tek events in public spaces and salons where, through spoken word and live music, we invited participants to turn their phones off and tap into their own creative space. To disengage and reengage.
Cartography of Self (2024) explores culture’s influence on body image and individual aspiration. It is typewritten and rendered in watercolor and bricolage and draws from a five-month-long movement study with Mary Abrams in New York.
The Unsent Letter Mailbox (2024) is a temporary public installation and anonymous reading series where passersby write unsent letters and, in exchange, are invited to read one written by someone else.
“Horizons” (2023) centers on the frailty and joy of the human body against the concrete backdrop of New York City. This piece captures the right to privacy and contemplation through unscripted movement (to dance as if no one were there).
Humanizing Data (2023) is a five part workshop series developed for the Van Alen Institute exploring the relationship between the body and the built environment through three steps: first, by attending to direct sensory experience; second, by identifying the narratives that inform spatial design; and lastly, by observing how we subsequently move through it.