Elina Kohanaya

Elina Kohanaya is a contemporary artist whose practice explores the subtle connections between human perception and the natural world. Working primarily with watercolor, she develops a distinctive figurative language in which plants, animals and imagined beings become carriers of emotion, memory and symbolic meaning.

Her practice draws on magical realism to explore wonder not as fantasy, but as a way of seeing — a state in which ordinary encounters can reveal hidden relationships and inner narratives. Rather than illustrating fictional stories, Kohanaya creates visual worlds in which nature becomes animated, conscious and emotionally resonant.

Her artistic language combines careful observation of natural forms with imaginative transformation, creating intimate scenes that exist between the recognizable and the imagined. Working across painting, collage and mixed media, she explores how ordinary materials, forms and encounters can open onto another reality.

Professional Development:
• Painting Courses, New Tretyakov Gallery (2021)

• Art Therapist, Art Therapy Center, Burganov Academy of Arts (2022)
• Psychologist (Postgraduate Degree), Donetsk branch of the Kyiv Institute (2010–2012)
• Professional Coach, Mykola Latansky’s School of Coaching (2010)
• Doctor of Dentistry, Donetsk National Medical University (1998–2003)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2026 “Unadorned”, Meta-senses gallery, Ukraine online
2025 “Dreams In Pera Palace”, Istanbul, Turkey, Pera Palace,
2025 “Temporarily Here”, Meta-senses gallery, Ukraine online
2024 Vogue seventh edition, Boomer Gallery, London, UK
2022 “Moscow in Flowers”, Museum Sadovoe koltso, Moscow, Russia
2022 “Countryside romance”, Moscow, Russia 
2022 “Art - into the home”, Association Exhibition Halls of Moscow, Moscow, Russia
2018 “Portraits of rats”, Collaboration with photographer Olga Smirnova, Loft Project Floors, St. Petersburg, Russia
2016 “Border Spaces”, ART PLAY, Moscow, Russia
2008 “Chin de pilot”, gallery on Kuznetsky Most, Moscow, Russia

PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS:

2010 Magical characters of Elina Kohanaya, Circular Kinopanorama as part of the first Moscow International Film Festival for Children and Teenagers KOT,  Moscow, Russia