Masha Reva: How Art Becomes Armor, Therapy, and a Way to Speak About Invisible Wounds

In this episode of the UFDA Podcast, artist Masha Reva joins host Anna Avetova to talk about a new large‑scale painting shown at M17, the personal story behind it, and why she feels this work marks the beginning of a new stage in her life and practice. The conversation also touches on art as self‑therapy, shifting from fashion to art, staying in Kyiv during the full‑scale war, and how she keeps herself disciplined in the studio.

Masha begins by describing the new work now on view at M17. She started the canvas almost a year ago: a three‑metre by 2.4‑metre oil painting that stood unfinished in her studio for months. Large formats, she admits, never came “easily” to her. It took her years to even dare to work on this scale, especially in oil, and this particular piece began as an ambitious challenge to herself — proof that she could inhabit such a large pictorial space.

The turning point came when curator Masha from M17 visited her studio in mid‑September. The curator initially wanted another work, but the exhibition’s theme and Reva’s inner state aligned so precisely that the half‑finished painting suddenly felt urgent. It became the excuse — and the pressure — she needed to complete it. She finished it in about three and a half weeks of non‑stop work: making time‑lapse videos of her sessions, constantly correcting and repainting, and thinking a lot about speed, something she says she still lacks in oil compared to her long‑practiced graphic work.

For Masha, this painting is more than a technical exercise. While she was finishing it, she was also working through a long‑buried personal trauma and significant changes in her life, including getting married that summer. The work gathered “extra layers” of meaning and became, in her words, very intimate and personal.

She explains that for many years art functioned as her armour and as a form of self‑healing. It was something meditative that allowed her to cope without naming certain experiences directly. Only now, at this particular moment, does she feel strong enough to speak openly about a childhood trauma that has been with her for almost thirty years. The painting itself is a kind of manifesto of life and of victory over that trauma: an image that fixes a state of bodily harmony, sexuality, and confidence as a woman and as an artist.

At the same time, she insists that the text she wrote to accompany the work is just as important as the image. In that text, she talks directly about what she had to live through and about the long, invisible impact such experiences can have. She hopes that by articulating it publicly she can offer support to people with similar histories and encourage them to acknowledge, process, and eventually let go of their own pain rather than carrying it silently for decades.

Later in the conversation, Anna asks about the “new phase” Masha mentioned and how it connects to her broader path. Reva looks back on the last ten years as a cycle that began when she was 27 and decided to step away from being a fashion designer. She had studied and worked in fashion (including abroad) and chose that path partly because it seemed safer and more practical. Growing up in a family of artists — a sculptor father and a mother who designed clothes — she felt both attracted to and intimidated by the idea of calling herself an artist.

For a long time she avoided that word, preferring labels like “designer” or “creative director”, and simply told herself she needed to draw. Only after reaching an important goal (completing her MA abroad) did she realise that pushing away what felt natural was unsustainable. She describes being an artist now as a way of containing many skills at once: design, illustration, set design, painting. Depending on the task, she “pulls out” the needed tool or discipline, but the core identity is no longer frightening. Naming herself an artist has become a form of accepting responsibility for a life where everything passes through the soul, not just through a brief.

A substantial part of the discussion is about where she works now. At the start of the full‑scale invasion, Reva’s first impulse was, like many others’, to run as far away as possible. What kept her in place was the studio she had already rented and was renovating in Kyiv when the war began. Finishing that space, investing money and energy into it, made her pause and reconsider leaving.

She recalls previous periods of living abroad — internships in Antwerp, studies in London — and acknowledges that she technically could move again. But she feels a strong pull to stay in Ukraine now. Being in Kyiv is not comfortable: travelling is difficult, the sense of isolation from the wider world is real, and the background of danger is constant. Yet precisely these conditions make her feel she can reach her full potential; “easy” circumstances, she says, rarely push her to work at maximum capacity.

She also emphasises a sense of responsibility to others. Staying, working, opening exhibitions, and simply showing that there is still life and culture in Ukraine matters to her. It is a way of sharing strength: “there are people here, they are working, you can do something here.” For now, she trusts this intuition more than any long‑term plan.

When Anna asks which projects from the past decade she considers the most important, Masha distinguishes between publicly known successes and those that matter most personally. She mentions high‑profile collaborations — such as work for Jacquemus or designing sets and costumes for the Royal Opera House — as key experiences in scale and professionalism, but returns emotionally to a more intimate project: a photo shoot at her family’s dacha on the Odesa coast, about childhood memories and the southern landscape.

This “dacha” material, parts of which appeared in Ukrainian Vogue and later in American Vogue, remains especially close to her because it is rooted in her own story. She has continued to shoot there, including on film, and dreams of eventually turning this accumulated footage into a more coherent project that could preserve the unique culture and atmosphere of Odesa’s seaside zone.

In the final part of the episode, listeners ask practical questions about how she manages work and life. Reva answers candidly that she is “far from ideal”, but recent events have pushed her to take her health seriously. After her father’s cancer diagnosis and successful surgery, she did her own check‑ups, worked with a nutritionist, adjusted her diet, and noticed how balanced food directly affects her energy and ability to work without daytime crashes. Sport, she admits, is still irregular, but she now clearly ranks health as the first priority, followed by family, and only then work and ambitions.

As for creative discipline, she describes a simple rule: come to the studio even when you feel empty. After finishing a big piece, she cleans the space to “sterile emptiness” and sits there, sometimes feeling like she is doing nothing. On such days she might start by browsing old photos and end up making a small zine as a gift for her husband. She sees these small, seemingly minor acts as part of the larger process; each reflection, each small object is another brick in the wall of her practice.

The main lesson she shares is that being an artist is not about waiting for inspiration. It is about building a system where you show up regularly — in a studio, a corner of your apartment, a co‑working space — so that when inspiration does arrive, it knows where to find you.