Iryna Manukovska works at the intersection of Socratic inquiry and visceral abstraction. Trained in applied systems analysis before turning to paint, she constructs thick impasto surfaces—60 to 200cm—that function less as decoration than as cognitive mirrors. Each canvas carries a single open-ended question as its title: Who am I trying to become? Whose expectations am I living up to? The method is ancient—Socrates understood that proper questioning restructures thought—but Manukovska applies it with deliberate materiality. Her oil surfaces accumulate in layers, mirroring the process by which we build and dismantle belief systems.

Working between Cyprus and Ukraine, she has developed the Questions to Move You Forward series into both exhibition format and self-published workbook. The practice extends beyond the studio: she facilitates flow state workshops for displaced populations and STEM professionals, investigating how abstract visual work impacts those whose navigational systems have been disrupted. Her background in systems thinking surfaces not in conceptual rhetoric but in structural clarity—the way colour fields interact, how questions trigger internal dialogue, where intuition meets analytical rigour. Art here serves as instrument rather than ornament.