Zhanna Tsytsyn

Zhanna Tsytsyn is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work exists at the intersection of personal history, myth, ecology, and speculative imagination. Born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and raised between her father’s Russian homeland and her mother’s roots in Kobuleti, Georgia, she immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. This layered, multicultural upbringing shapes a practice deeply attuned to questions of identity, displacement, and the ways environment informs consciousness.

Working across painting, sculpture, and mask-making, Tsytsyn draws on both traditional artisanal methods and critical cultural inquiry. Her practice is rooted in Ecosomatics, honoring the profound interconnectedness of body, land, and all living organisms. Through this lens, she investigates the myths and foundational stories that underlie personal identity and collective ideology—stories that reveal how we construct, inherit, and challenge the narratives of our time.

Tsytsyn’s visual language emerges through an intuitive, tactile process using oil paint, earth pigments, clay, foraged botanical materials, and new media forms. Drawing on Slavic mythologies, Siberian shamanism, historical epics, American Westerns, and science fiction, Tsytsyn weaves pa...

2008 - BA - Painting, Drawing and Printmaking

Portland State University, Portland, OR

2004 - The Art Institute of Portland

Select Exhibitions

2024 - "Identity Crisis" - Ethereal Reflections, Portland, OR

2024 - Anstine Gallery, Vancouver, WA

2023 - Art at the Cave Gallery, Vancouver, WA

2023 - Clark County Open Studios, WA

2023 - Portland Open Studios, OR

2023 - Solo Show - The Matters of Origins, La Casita Cultural Center, Vancouver, WA

2022 - We Are Reversal, Palazzo Pisani-Revedin "Rossini", Venice, Italy

2022 - Blind Insect Gallery, Portland, OR

2022 - La Casita Cultural Center, Vancouver, WA

2022 - Rebirth, Le Jardins Des Arts, New York, NY