Osías Yanov’s multidisciplinary practice includes performances, celebrations, drawings, installations, sculptures and videos. His works explore the creation of conceptual and sensorial fields of resistance against any stereotyping control of subjectivity. His practice is nurtured by gender theories, esoteric philosophies, night parties, communion with nature. He draws on cultural objects and memories that affect our bodily ways of being in the world and with each other. Yanov believes in sensorial experiences and the erotic as tools for creating knowledge and social transformation. His methodology for developing performances often involves working closely over a period of time with a group of people or community. He is interested in methodologies for knowledge that excede the traditions of rationalistic thought, drawing from esoteric and pre-Columbian conceptions of the world along with their non-extractivist approaches to the natural world, as well as relying on sensual experiences of the body.

In Gomero (Rubber Tree, presented at Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, 2018), Coreografías de Sal (Choreographies of Salt, Faena Art Center, Buenos Aires, 2019) and Ser con el Otre (Being with Others, Berlin Biennale 11, 2020) Yanov works with the notion of “ethno-fiction” to imagine the possibility of a present derived from a fictional past inhabited by hybrid beings who connect with each other through their skins and whose interactions with their environment are not based on an extractivist model. In that
ecosystem there would be no major differentiation between human being, animal and landscape. We would all be “earthlings”, in the sense employed by Native American people’s cosmogonies as well as by a European thinker such as Bruno Latour. Through experiences, actions, performances, installations and exercises, Yanov poses questions about how to create a deep sense of connection among species, starting with humans themselves. In his words, “There is no good reason to continue attached to the
idea of being Modern, one form of existence can no longer be separated from another”.

Yanov participated in the Beca Kuitca/Universidad Di Tella Artists Program in 2011-12. From 2001 to 2010 he was one of four members in the experimental artists’ collective Rosa Chancho. In 2012 he presented Dinámica de Encaje, his first individual installation/performance work. In 2013 he presented a performance curated by Ines Katzsenstein and Javier Villa. In 2015 he was commissioned by MALBA, Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires and its Artistic Director, Agustín Perez Rubio, to produce VI Sesión en el Parlamento, a complex performance involving a dozen dancers he had met in Buenos Aires’ night club scene and a large sculpture which responded to the museum’s architecture.

In 2016 he worked with curators Manuela Moscoso and Pablo Lafuente on Crisis, a performance and exhibition at Casa del Alabado, a pre- Columbian collection in Quito, Ecuador, researching ancient cultures which had developed fluid definitions of gender and power roles. In 2017 Yanov participated in the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea, curated by Maria Lind. In 2018 he was awarded the Gasworks Residency in London.
In 2019 he was awarded the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency program. That same year he was commissioned to develop Coreografías de Sal (Choreographies of Salt), a project involving months of research, intensive group training and workshops leading to two-day performances at Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires. It later continued as a series of group exercises in a natural context which led to the project he presented as a solo show at the 2020 Berlin Biennial. In 2022 he was invited by MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, Spain to develop a special performance working with differently-abled people. In early 2023 he presented a performance at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and later this year he will participate in the Gothenburg Biennial, Sweden. He currently runs Pulpería Mutualica, an alternative cultural space in Buenos Aires where parties, performances and workshops take place.

His works are in the collections of Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires; FRAC du Pays de la Loire; Rose Museum at Brandeis, among other art institutions.