Lana Malakhoff (Svetlana Malakhova) is a New York–based contemporary artist whose practice is devoted to exploring the human body as a living, emotional, and sculptural matter. In her works, the body becomes a landscape of tension and transformation — a mass that preserves both vulnerability and strength.
Educated at the leading art academies of Europe and the United States — including the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, Stroganov Academy, Florence Academy of Art, and New York Academy of Art — she combines the precision of classical academic training with a distinctly contemporary visual language.
Malakhoff’s artistic method also includes a rare practice of anatomical study with a pathologist, allowing her to understand the human form not only visually, but as an inner structure of life and decay. This experience has become the foundation of her exploration of corporeality — what she calls “telecnost”, or the material presence of the body.
Her works have been exhibited internationally — including Art Russia Fair, Art Dubai, Art Shanghai, and Art on Paper (New York) — and are held in the Dresden Museum of Russian–German Culture.
Malakhoff is regularly invited to speak about her projects and reflections on corporeality on New York radio and television, as well as in interviews for ArtRussia and Art & Life magazines.
In Malakhoff’s paintings, corporeality can be physically felt — both on the canvas and in the viewer’s space — as a full presence of the body beside the observer.
Currently, Malakhoff lives and works in New York, preparing new chapters of her major project “Feelings in Plastic” and developing large-scale figurative paintings that explore the collective experience of the body.