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Abigail Sobotka-Briner
UNITED STATES
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"I make work about the expression and oppression of women."
Abigail Sobotka-Briner, who works under the name Abyz.Mal and goes by Aby, is a spatial designer and multimedia artist based in Los Angeles, California. The two halves of that description, spatial design and multimedia art, are not separate pursuits but complementary lenses through which she approaches making, each informing the other. Her practice moves fluidly between disciplines, and this refusal to be confined to a single medium is itself meaningful, reflecting an artist who thinks across boundaries of form, scale, and material rather than within the limits of any one of them.
alright | Mixed Media
$150
"a woman:
expected to bend, to fold,
compact
too big: reduce, retract, reform, refine
it is like boxing up the wind
or trying to dim the sun"
At the center of her work is a sustained engagement with the expression and oppression of women and queer people, themes she returns to as both subject and motivation. Her art does not treat these concerns from a distance but takes them up directly, using the visual language of form and figure to give shape to questions of identity, power, and visibility. This commitment gives her practice its underlying seriousness of purpose, anchoring the formal decisions she makes in a deeper set of social and personal stakes that matter to her well beyond the surface of any single piece.
can you hear me? | Mixed Media
$300
"i love you but -
if you don't behave the way I want you to
you will suffer;
manipulation is
fear, loneliness, desperation, hopelessness, despair.
this is not a reflection of your worth."
"Making is healing for me, not only a way of producing."
Alongside this social dimension, Aby engages with the process of making itself as a means of healing, treating the act of creation as restorative rather than merely productive. This understanding reframes what art is for in her practice, positioning the studio as a space of recovery and processing as much as expression. The two purposes are intertwined, since the same work that addresses oppression and expression in the wider world also serves a private function for the artist, allowing her to move through and transform her own experience through the labor of making.
figure study (upset) | Acrylic
$150
"where were you the night they projected my naked body onto the city?
blue and green;
yellow and orange
complimentary
consider the light house shining over the stormy sea;
the beam serves as a guide but the ship must be responsible for its destiny."
Formally, Aby is drawn to the interplay between contrasting visual languages, and she enjoys using form and figure to juxtapose rigid geometries with the soft curve of the human shape. This tension between the hard-edged and the organic is one of the defining characteristics of her paintings, setting structure against flesh, the constructed against the bodily. The juxtaposition is not merely a compositional device but a carrier of meaning, echoing the larger themes of her work, where bodies exist within systems and structures that may constrain, define, or fail to contain them.
"i am in awe
the dip of her waist
her gentle touch
the whisper of her hair
and oasis of her soft skin
to hold her beautiful body is to cradle a precious treasure
who am i?
what beauty i was missing -
she is divine."
who am i? | Oil
$700
"With form and figure I try to evoke possession, belonging, intention, and compassion, setting hard geometry against the human shape until the two begin speaking together."
"My work explores the expression and oppression of women and queer people, but it is also where I go to heal, because the process of making is itself a kind of repair for me. I am drawn to juxtaposing rigid geometries with the soft curve of the human shape, letting structure and body meet in the same frame. Through that contrast I want to evoke thoughts of possession, belonging, intention, and compassion. I do not believe art is made alone. I believe in collaboration and community, and almost everything I have done, as a builder, researcher, writer, archivist, and assistant, has been alongside other people, in service of something shared."
A belief in collaboration and community runs throughout Aby's practice and shapes how she understands her role as an artist. She does not conceive of art-making as a solitary act performed in isolation but as something fundamentally connected to others, embedded in shared effort and collective endeavor. This conviction has carried her into a wide range of working relationships and roles, and it reflects a generosity of spirit that treats the making of art and exhibitions as a communal undertaking, one in which many hands and perspectives contribute to what is ultimately produced.
what are we? | Oil
$700
"the soft curve of a woman's neck
a human's touch
please feel me
lets share our bodies;
you are welcome"
Through this play of geometry and figure, she strives to evoke thoughts of possession, belonging, intention, and compassion in her paintings. These four concerns map a rich emotional and conceptual territory, moving from questions of ownership and who belongs where, to matters of purpose and care. By naming compassion among her aims, Aby signals that her work, for all its engagement with oppression and power, is ultimately oriented toward empathy. The paintings are meant to provoke reflection on how people possess and belong, how intention shapes action, and how compassion might enter into all of it.
we, me | Mixed Media
$300
"relax your brow;
it is worthless.
was your body made to please the eye?
or to support your essence
in being empathetic, compassionate, fair, curious, loving, HUMAN?
what is my body made for?
what should i be doing with it?"
A belief in collaboration and community runs throughout Aby's practice and shapes how she understands her role as an artist. She does not conceive of art-making as a solitary act performed in isolation but as something fundamentally connected to others, embedded in shared effort and collective endeavor. This conviction has carried her into a wide range of working relationships and roles, and it reflects a generosity of spirit that treats the making of art and exhibitions as a communal undertaking, one in which many hands and perspectives contribute to what is ultimately produced.
"do you remember when this was your favorite thing
and what you wanted was what you have now
but maybe
this is even better?
thank you"
vision field | Mixed Media
$300
The breadth of her professional experience reflects this collaborative ethos directly. Aby has worked as a builder, researcher, writer, archivist, and curatorial and editorial assistant, contributing to projects and exhibitions across an unusually wide geography. Her work has taken her to Los Angeles, Black Rock City, New Delhi, Jodhpur, Odisha, Mumbai, New York, and Pittsburgh, spanning continents and contexts. This range of roles reveals an artist comfortable in many positions within the ecosystem of art and exhibition-making, equally willing to build, to research, to document, and to support, rather than insisting on a single fixed identity.
"I set rigid geometry against the soft curve of the body."
Her education bridges the disciplines that define her practice. Aby is currently pursuing an Executive Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Southern California, extending her engagement with space, structure, and the built environment into the realm of cities and planning. She holds a BA from the University of Pittsburgh in architecture studies and studio arts, a combination that explains the dual sensibility evident throughout her work. The pairing of architecture and studio art at the foundation of her training accounts for the ease with which she moves between the spatial and the expressive, the structural and the figurative.
velvet lady | Mixed Media
$150
"i looked at myself in the mirror
bent at the hip. wet hair dripping
belly spilling over in three folds,
breasts dangling lazily
thighs soft and buttocks dimpled
i looked at myself in the mirror
looking back: a marble statue of Venus
splendid, sweet, strong
a gentle curve to her ample waist"
This grounding in both architecture and art clarifies why rigid geometry and the human form sit together so naturally in her work. Her training taught her to think architecturally, in terms of structure, space, and system, while also equipping her with the language of studio practice, of figure, gesture, and material. The result is an artist whose paintings carry the logic of both disciplines at once, in which the built and the bodily are not opposed but held in productive tension, each given its due within a single frame.
"filled up
with unrecognizable matter
petrified, glassy stare
far away
but still there
cold, stiff
lonely when the lights go off
surrounded by echoes of your receding steps
living without you
is an odd form of taxidermy"
when you spoke the truth it scared me | Mixed Media
$150
For this exhibition, Aby is excited to share ten works, each accompanied by an original written piece drawn from recent personal journal entries. This pairing of image and text adds a further dimension to the presentation, allowing the visual work to be encountered alongside her own words, taken from a private and reflective source. The decision to include journal entries deepens the intimacy of the show, offering viewers not only the paintings themselves but a glimpse of the personal reflection surrounding them, and reinforcing the sense that for Aby, making and processing, the public and the private, are bound closely together.
forward | Collage
"there will come a day when the actions of others will not bother you.
you have control of how you feel, but it is alright to FEEL:
revel in goodness, warmth, and light;
sit in the sadness and grief;
and then
step forward"
"I believe deeply in the power of collaboration and community."
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