Zhenia Machkovska
Was born in 1999 in Dnipro, Ukraine. Lives and works in Kyiv.
In 2018, she graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk College of Theatre and Arts (Faculty of Fine Arts), and in 2022 from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (NAFAA), Faculty of Fine Arts and Restoration.
In her artistic practice, she works with painting and mixed media, combining acrylic, aerosol, markers, liners, and graphic materials. Her works are formed at the intersection of intuitive gesture and deliberate imagery, creating multilayered compositions in which personal experience is transformed into visual metaphors.
The central themes of her work are memory, self-awareness, internal dialogue, and the emotional transformations of the individual. The artist explores fragile psychological states—moments of tension, calm, or internal shifts that often go unnoticed yet shape one’s identity. The characters in her works exist on the boundary between reality and metaphor, between the visible and the felt, creating a space where individual experience acquires universal resonance.
Key series in her artistic practice: “Daily Oxymoron,” “Those Who Have Sprouted.”
Solo Exhibitions
2024 — “Daily Oxymoron,” festival “Actor’s House. Immersion,” Zaporizhzhia.
2023 — “Daily Oxymoron,” art bar Malevich, Kyiv.
2022 — “New Reality,” creative cluster Na poshti, Ternopil.
2021 — “Gaze,” bookstore Siaivo knyhy, Kyiv.
Group Exhibitions
2024 — “Ukraine: Two Realities, or Ukrainian Surrealism,” Ukrainian Cultural Center, Freiburg, Germany.
2023 — “Cosmogony of Meanings,” Korsakov Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art, Lutsk.
2023 — “Shelter,” Pellas Gallery, Boston, USA.
2023 — “Creative Congress,” White World Gallery, Kyiv.
2023 — “Open Space. Chronicles of Transition,” National Museum “Kyiv Picture Gallery,” Kyiv.
2022 — “Tomorrow,” Ukrainian-Georgian exhibition, Literary Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia.
2025 — appointed to receive the Presidential Scholarship of Ukraine for young writers and artists in the fields of music, theatre, fine arts, choreography, variety and circus arts, and cinema.
The artist’s works are represented in the collection of the Korsakov Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art (Lutsk, Ukraine), as well as in private collections in Ukraine, Poland, the USA, and Japan.
Zhenia Machkovska