I work at the intersection of mental health, cognition, and migration. Painting, essay, immersive installation, workshop, and dance performance are connected tools for the same inquiry: how do we navigate when the familiar systems stop working?

My core body of work is large-scale oil on canvas in thick impasto, 60 to 200 cm. The sky is my formal source and my umbrella metaphor — a position of distant observation, where things that feel urgent on the ground become readable differently. Each painting carries a single open-ended question as its title. Whose expectations am I trying to live up to? Should I build or destroy? What is in my hands? The question is not an answer. It is an entry point.

I trained in applied systems analysis before I turned to paint, and that training surfaces not as conceptual rhetoric but as structural clarity — how colour fields interact, how questions trigger internal dialogue, where intuition meets analytical rigour. Forced and chosen migration runs through the work as a generational thread; my grandmother survived the Holocaust, and I have studied displacement through survival diaries and interviews for over a decade.

The practice extends beyond the studio. Since 2022 I have facilitated flow-state workshops for displaced Ukrainian communities and STEM professionals, investigating how abstract visual work supports those whose navigational systems have been disrupted. The painting is the starting point; the work happens in the viewer.Iryna Manukovska (b. 1984, Ukraine) is a Cyprus-based interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of mental health, cognition, and social cohesion. Her practice combines analytical methodology with intuitive expression, and uses abstract oil painting, open-ended essays, immersive installations, workshops, and dance performance as connected tools for the same inquiry. Trained in applied systems analysis at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute before turning to paint, she builds large-scale oil-on-canvas works — 60 to 200 cm, in thick impasto — in which the sky operates as both formal source and umbrella metaphor.

Forced and voluntary migration is a generational thread in her work. Her grandmother survived the Holocaust, and she has been studying displacement through survival diaries and interviews for over a decade. Her practice spans the long-running Questions to Move You Forward series; the Newborns of Ukrainian War project (2022); the UNESCO Seeds of Culture commission (Malta, 2022, acquired by UNESCO Malta); and Questioning Darkness, developed during a 2025 residency at the Spitsbergen Artist Center, Svalbard.

Manukovska co-founded the Paphos Women Artists Union in 2022 and is an ICF-certified coach. Alongside her studio practice she has facilitated flow-state workshops since 2022 for displaced Ukrainian communities and STEM professionals — investigating how abstract visual work supports those whose navigational systems have been disrupted. Her work is held in private and institutional collections across Cyprus, Ukraine, Spain, France, Malta, and Norway.