YANA MALANII
SCROLL
SERIES
What would remain of the enlightened one if, in therapy, he were asked to speak not in truths but in the first person?
The series imagines the enlightened one not as a bearer of truth, but as a person. Not the one who knows the answers, but the one who is asked, for the first time, to speak about himself.
What remains once the teachings, the symbols and the image of one who has already understood everything are set aside? Is there fear, doubt, guilt, attachment, loneliness behind the wisdom? And what would someone used to answering the questions of others speak about, if the questions were finally put to him?
This is not an attempt to call enlightenment into question. What interests me is something else: the person who may have remained inside the image of the enlightened one.
SERIES
Witness
Witness is a series that explores painting as an act of witnessing rather than an act of making.
The witness is not the subject of these works. It is the position from which they are made.
What remains of a figure when it stops being a protagonist and becomes only a witness — present, but never acting? The figure here does not explain, decide, or tell a story. It remains.
Each painting investigates a different mode of witnessing — up to the moment when the witness stops observing and becomes what it was observing.
The series does not seek to interpret events or offer conclusions. Instead, it asks how painting can hold presence without turning it into narrative, symbol, or the event itself.
ABOUT
Yana Malanii is a Ukrainian contemporary artist working on the boundary between abstract and figurative painting.
In her practice, Yana explores what remains hidden behind the visible: inner states, contradictions, and the moments when the familiar image of a person begins to lose its certainty. She is interested less in who we are than in the moment when that answer stops being obvious.
The figures in her works emerge and dissolve, remaining on the threshold between presence and absence, appearance and disappearance. Layers of paint, scratches, drips, and unfinished forms become part of this process: painting does not explain what is hidden, but allows it to gradually become visible.
Across different series, Yana turns to inner experience, memory, identity, and the images behind which a person may hide. Her works do not offer a ready-made interpretation; instead, they leave room for the viewer to encounter what cannot always be put into words.
Born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
ABOUT
Yana Malanii is a Ukrainian contemporary artist working on the boundary between abstract and figurative painting.
In her practice, Yana explores what remains hidden behind the visible: inner states, contradictions, and the moments when the familiar image of a person begins to lose its certainty. She is interested less in who we are than in the moment when that answer stops being obvious.
The figures in her works emerge and dissolve, remaining on the threshold between presence and absence, appearance and disappearance. Layers of paint, scratches, drips, and unfinished forms become part of this process: painting does not explain what is hidden, but allows it to gradually become visible.
Across different series, Yana turns to inner experience, memory, identity, and the images behind which a person may hide. Her works do not offer a ready-made interpretation; instead, they leave room for the viewer to encounter what cannot always be put into words.
Born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.