I cannot escape who I am, even if I do not fit the values of the contemporary art world. This world is a power structure that decides what is to be valued. I can only truly value what is really me.
-Natacha Sochat
🌿 Natacha Villamia Sochat
About Natacha Villamia Sochat
I am a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, photography, performance, artist books, and installation. I was born in New York City and raised in La Habana, Cuba, an early experience that shaped my sensory perception, relationship to memory, and understanding of interconnected systems.
My artistic formation unfolded across multiple geographies and disciplines, including photography in Berlin, undergraduate studies at Boston University, classical training at the Paul Ingbretson Atelier, printmaking and bookmaking in various institutions, and graduate studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Over time, my work moved beyond medium-based categories toward a practice grounded in emergence, pattern, and relational thinking.
Rather than working in discrete series, I develop long-term bodies of work that evolved simultaneously across years or decades, often intersecting with one another. Recurring concerns include the human face as a site of identity and pattern, trees and root systems as metaphors for memory and ancestry, language as material, and ritual as a form of performance embedded in daily life.
I view art as a living language of connection, emergence, and transformation—
a synthesis of thought, emotion, and matter through which life reveals its own intelligence.
It is a form of consciousness that bridges science and spirit, the personal and the collective,
restoring the invisible threads that bind us to one another and to the natural world.
Every work invites multiple interpretations: what I, the artist, am saying – and what the viewer perceives through their own experience.
🌱 Art as Inquiry and Connection
I explore ideas that are often contradictory or unresolved – subjects that resist simple answers. My work is deeply personal yet engaged with the complexities of contemporary life. On its most direct level, it aims to create a positive public health experience, enriching individual and communal well-being through visual encounter.
Conceptually, I view existence as part of a NeuroMorphic Universe – a living system where everything is interconnected. In this framework, the actual experience of the work itself becomes the art.
🧵 Material and Metaphor
I work across painting, sculpture, crochet, ceramics, printmaking, photography, performance, and video. Each medium carries its own sensibility and metaphorical potential.
For example, crochet references both the hand and the value of labor. It evokes the domestic, the feminine, the biological, and the cosmic. It can represent connection and networks, or conversely, entanglement and confinement.
Found objects in my work are never arbitrary – they come from my personal life, not from the marketplace. Each one carries memory and history. These materials embody the authenticity of lived experience.
My work is informed by my identities as a woman, healer, scientist, and multicultural being. I am Cuban, Puerto Rican – Taíno, African, and European — a complex lineage that forms the foundation of my perspective and practice.
🧬 Philosophy and Process
I believe that the hand is the mind. Thought and making are inseparable. My creative process flows between moments of intuitive action and reflective observation – between chaos and order, creation and contemplation.
Art, to me, is not spectacle or commodity. It is a contribution to public health, a restorative act that nurtures empathy, connection, and curiosity. My medical and biological knowledge continually remind me that every gesture of creation participates in the healing of the human condition.
🎓 Education and Formation
Initially self-taught, I was influenced by Jerry Uelsmann’s imaginative photography, Bernard Voichysunk’s teachings on the relativity of color, Harold Tovish’s work ethic, Lynn Margulis theory of SymbioGenesis, and Arthur Polonsky’s expressive philosophy. Later, Marilyn Arsem, Susan Denker, Liz Phillips, Gerry Bergstein, Robert Baart, John Schulz, Peter Scott, Nan Freeman, and Don Sibley, all at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, guided me in expanding my practice conceptually.
I studied at the Paul Ingbretson Atelier, not to refine drawing alone, but to deepen my ability to see – to perceive light and form. I completed two post-baccalaureate programs, at Brandeis University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, before earning my MFA in Studio Art from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.
I also hold an MD from the Boston University School of Medicine and a BA in Biology (summa cum laude, minor in Art History). My undergraduate mentor, Professor Lynn Margulis, transformed my understanding of life and evolution through her theory of symbiosis – shaping the conceptual foundation of my art.
💊 Healing, Teaching, and Public Health
I practiced emergency medicine and public health emergency preparedness while raising my family. These experiences profoundly shaped my view of art’s social function. Art objects, in my perspective, are agents of well-being. They contribute to the psychological and cultural health of communities.
Art should not be created merely for shock, spectacle, or marketplace recognition. My mission is to contribute to public health through aesthetic experience – to make work that encourages thought, empathy, and connection.
I have taught painting, drawing, and printmaking at multiple institutions across the United States. Teaching continues to be an essential part of my philosophy: sharing knowledge, fostering inquiry, and empowering others to see through their own lenses.
🧩 Art, Institutions, and Independence
To understand my practice, one must also understand the world artists inhabit. Throughout history, art has existed within systems of power – from the church and aristocracy of earlier centuries to the critics, curators, and markets of today.
In the 20th century, figures like Clement Greenberg shaped the dominant art discourse, determining what styles and ideas would be legitimized. Today, institutions, museums, and commercial galleries continue to influence which artists are seen and valued. These systems are not inherently wrong; they simply reflect the reality of art within oligarchic capitalist and institutional frameworks.
Artists, however, often become “brands” – shaped to fit a recognizable market identity. Many create specifically for interior designers or merchandise, which serves its purpose in commerce. My path differs. I have always created independently of these pressures, choosing instead to remain authentic to my own inquiry and voice.
🔍 Purpose and Continuity
I make art that is truly my own – work that resonates with the individual viewer and leaves room for interpretation. My goal is to add to the public health of society while fostering reflection, slow-looking, and visual pleasure.
Much of my art speaks simultaneously to the child and the adult – to wonder and wisdom, innocence and complexity. My themes draw from science, philosophy, and cultural identity, always grounded in compassion and curiosity.
“Art is my way of connecting what has been divided – science and spirit, thought and feeling, the individual and the collective.”
🌺 Enduring Ideas and Motifs
Through the years, certain ideas have remained central to my practice:
Chaos, Complexity, Emergence, Intuition, DNA of Memory, The Actual Experience, Saxa Loquuntur, Construction–Deconstruction–Reconstruction, UpRooted, Making Roots, I Am Witness, Americana-Hispana, Patterns, Germs, Words Are Seeds, The Hand is the Mind, In My Garden, Networking, Grid, Connection, By Hand and By Machine, Face as Icon, Fractals, NeuroMorphic, Paintings for Children, String Theory, and Ethics.
These are not merely subjects — they are the complexity and living principles that guide my art and philosophy.
This website serves as an archive of my work. It is not comprehensive, as my creative life continues to expand and evolve.
I live and work in North Carolina. My practice continues to evolve as a living system rather than a closed body of work.
Please visit SimpleVida Contemporary Art.
For more information and explanation on my work please visit my other site: Natacha Sochat
Here is a link on that site to my exhibition history and art CV.
2012 Graduation Speaker part 1 Part 2
Litmus Interview 2019
Art of the Mind Interview Raleigh NC 2019
Herencia Group Exhibition 2019
CMAC Interview 2020
2021 Arts and Culture Award
MFA Thesis Aidekman Gallery Tufts University Boston, MA
MFA thesis video
SugiPOP! Portsmouth Museum of Art Snowboard
NeuroMorphic – Beland Gallery Essex Art Center Lawrence MA
NeuroMorphic – NKG Boston MA
Between Presence and Absence: Making Roots -The Carrack Modern Gallery Durham NC
Retablos – Waterworks Visual Arts Center Salisbury NC
Making Roots – CMAC Gallery Raleigh NC
Litmus Gallery Group exhibition interview
Eye am Witness – Paintings for Children, Waterworks Visual Arts Center Salisbury NC
Face and Pattern solo exhibition 2021 Duke University