Nia Kanevsky
Painter
Artist Statement
Nia Kanevsky works across figurative painting and graphic works, building staged situations. Figures appear in simplified interiors, placed close yet held apart. Meaning forms through gesture, distance and the way figures share space, without settling into a single reading.
Horned headwear runs through the work. It also exists as a single object made by the artist, brought from the paintings into real life. It can be worn and taken off again, like stepping into a role and out of it, introducing a light note while leaving the situation unchanged.
Her protagonists are often older, aware of their position but not moving through it. They remain in place, suspended in moments that feel clear, yet do not advance. When more than one figure appears, something holds between them, but never quite becomes contact.
The paintings are built through visible brushwork and unblended areas of colour. Forms stay close to the surface; depth is held back. Colour is direct and saturated, set in flat planes. Skin, space and objects shift into unexpected hues, sometimes slightly out of register, keeping the image exposed.
Across the work, the same condition returns: a scene that appears complete, while something inside it does not fully align and continues anyway.
Exhibition
March 2026
Lisbon
Ministry of Reveries
Beyond everyday, humans move through alternative states, parallel to our routine, drifting through waking dreams, visions, reveries, and subtle currents that rise from the depths of the subconscious.
Reveries are a way to connect with our inner nature and true self. They reveal what usually hides beneath the noise of daily life, emerging from the deepest longings of the soul.
In reality, we face frustration and fears, feel the weight of time slipping, and wrestle with questions of choices and direction.
Dreams and reveries are our refuge — a way to navigate the harshness of everyday life, boredom, and routine, while staying rooted in our identity and inner nature.
Humans exist in these two worlds at once, moving between the tangible and the dreamlike, the seen and the felt.
Exhibition
Overloved and Underloved
The Art of Family Bonds
June 2026
Lisbon
Nia Kanevsky · Grishigiano
“The person with a mop never has to explain what they are doing in your room.”
Nia Kanevsky
A pink wall, a mother in a doorway, and a situation that keeps returning. A mother and an adult son who somehow keep finding themselves in the same room. Overloved, underloved, and hard to tell apart.
Almost every painting was made for this show. The mother appears throughout — in doorways, resting on a sofa, watching from the background. The son looks different in each painting, but the situation remains the same.
Alongside the paintings, red-bordered miniatures compress the same cast into something you could hold in one hand. The canvases get smaller. The mother gets bigger. Family photographs pinned to painted walls — the past insisting on the present, sharing the same room whether invited or not.
Both artists work with staged situations and figures held in place. Here the scene returns again and again, where something inside it does not fully align and continues anyway.
