Zhanna Tsytsyn,
Where Roots Refuse Borders
April 3 - May 8, 2026
One Grand Gallery is pleased to present our first exhibition with Oregon-based artist Zhanna Tsytsyn. Where Roots Refuse Borders is a solo exhibition by Zhanna Tsytsyn exploring migration, memory, and transformation through a visual language that merges human, plant, and mythic forms. Drawing on the metaphor of soil as a living archive, the work considers identity not as fixed, but as something continuously shaped by movement and exchange. Hybrid figures - part human, part vegetation, inhabit expansive, steppe-like spaces, embodying porous boundaries between species, geographies, and histories. Through layered patterns and rhythmic repetition, the compositions echo the unseen systems that sustain both ecological and cultural life, inviting viewers to reflect on how inherited narratives and behaviors might be reimagined.
Rooted in animist traditions and informed by Siberian heritage, the work incorporates masks as sites of transformation; thresholds between the visible and invisible, the ancestral and the emergent. These figures resist containment, much like wild plants that grow beyond imposed borders, offering a vision of coexistence grounded in interdependence and reciprocity. Through these hybrid forms, the exhibition proposes a vision of belonging rooted not in borders, but in dynamic interconnection.
Zhanna Tsytsyn is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work exists at the intersection of personal history, myth, ecology, and speculative imagination. Born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and raised between her father’s Russian homeland and her mother’s roots in Kobuleti, Georgia, she immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. This layered, multicultural upbringing shapes a practice deeply attuned to questions of identity, displacement, and ways the environment informs consciousness. Through her work, Tsytsyn invites viewers into a space of stillness, reflection, and mythic possibility—a return to the body, the ecosystem, and the elemental forces that shape both personal and collective futures. She lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.
Press:
Cultivating Memory with Zhanna Tsytsyn
April PADA Art Guide Cover
EverOut
@zhannavtsytsyn
zhannatsytsyn.com