Yana Malanii

Yana Malanii is a Ukrainian contemporary artist born in 1993 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. She lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.
Her painting practice examines witnessing as a condition of presence. Working with reduced figurative forms, restrained colour, and layered surfaces, Malanii explores distance, vulnerability, transformation, and the limits of intervention. Figures appear throughout her work, but they are not presented as protagonists or placed within fixed narratives. Instead, they remain within the image as witnesses, suspended between observation and participation.
Malanii holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University in Kyiv. This background informs her sustained attention to perception and human experience, while painting remains an independent field of inquiry rather than an illustration of psychological concepts.
Malanii is currently developing Witness, an ongoing series that considers different modes of witnessing through stillness, movement, distance, protection, and immersion. Through visible brushwork, scratches, drips, erasures, and layered paint, she approaches the surface as a record of physical contact and sustained attention.

Master's Degree in Psychology
National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Kyiv, Ukraine

July 2026 — Body, International Online Group Exhibition, No. 35 Gallery