#59: Sofia Defino Leiby
"I am a flaneur, online and off."
Sofia (@waystomakemoneyonline) is an artist, yogi, and member of my on-again, off-again Sunday writing group. She’s currently in residence at a former paintbrush factory in Bavaria, ahead of a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Nürnberg this September (more on that below). May Text, her debut collection of prose, was published by Bauer Verlag, Paris in 2023.
Ever the purveyor of niche luxury wellness, Sofia was also one of the first to clue me into Swiss pharmaceutical waters — specifically Aura Soma, whose crayon-colored bottles inspired a series of paintings back in 2022:
(Similar, but different: St. Leonhards’ Sun, Moon & Light waters, which are bottled during different moon and light phases in an untouched Bavarian spring and sold at most bio stores for just 1–4 euros…)
Onto her Health Gossip…
Health Gossip with Sofia Defino Leiby
📍 Bavaria/Berlin/Brussels
🌌 Sagittarius/Scorpio/Sagittarius
What does health mean to you?
Being able to make art, have thoughts, enjoy life, and feel physically good in my body.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
I am often in awe of my own life. The awe contains both positive and negative feelings. I spend most of my days with a sort of improvised structured/ unstructuredness. I am a flaneur, online and off.
At the moment, I'm living in Nuremberg, Germany, as part of an artist residency and scholarship founded by a brush company called Da Vinci. I'm preparing for my first show at a Kunstverein (one of the many small private and publicly-funded nonprofit institutions in Germany of this kind). I have every paintbrush imaginable — ussuri sable, black sable, squirrel, pony, goat, ox — free rent, and they also give me lots of free paints. I paint in the former corporate headquarters of the brush company. All the floors are stone because they negate static electricity which would interfere with brushmaking. The trade-off is I have to live in a very provincial environment with generally a negative vibe, as one could expect, on the side of the autobahn across from a Burger King. The traffic is very loud. But the people are nice. I'm in the last month.
I spend a lot of days cleaning up, thinking, painting, working on my computer, doing yoga on Zoom with my teachers, or bothering my friend who works at a coffee shop downtown. I also have a lot of long phone calls with my partner, friends, and family.
I am a flaneur, online and off.
How do you start and end your days?
Lately, my partner and I (we live in different cities) set a time the day before to do 10 minutes of free writing early in the morning. We each give the other a topic, and then we write for ten minutes on the topic. It's a really great way to start the day. Then I have coffee, usually fast for 1-2 hours, and then eat some kind of fruit salad with a carb. I end by reading or watching something on Youtube, usually a horror game with commentary. I do not have good sleep hygiene. On good days, I read fiction. If I'm with my partner, we read together.
Can you recall a time when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
I never used to exercise at all. I mean, really, nothing. Besides jogging on the treadmill once or twice at a gym or a few fitness classes. In 2020, I had a very bad mental breakdown — the worst of my life so far — living alone in Germany in a neighborhood full of old people. I had moved to Berlin about a year before the pandemic hit, and I was completely isolated and alone. I began doing Zoom HIIT classes, found Zoom Pilates and yoga, and started doing as much as I could. It kept me sane. I am so grateful for that, because yoga really saved me. Now I practice at least 1 - 3 times per week. It's not much, but in those five years, I've really advanced my practice. It helps so much to see feedback from your own body.
