Tanya Levina paints the immigrant experience. Along with nearly 500,000 other Soviet Jewish Refugees, Levina arrived in Brooklyn with her family from Belarus in the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Levina's work explores the immigrant community hailing from the former USSR countries in Brooklyn. Many of these immigrants moved into the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, where they have been for decades since. Levina is fascinated by the absurdities and contradictions that abound in this community, painting the everyday moments which encapsulate that sometimes insular diaspora experience, where poverty and extravagance are inexplicably coupled and where old-world values are constantly clashing with modern American culture.
Tanya Levina lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She studied painting at the Art Students League, Slade School of Fine Arts in London, and The New York Academy of Art. Levina is a recipient of a COJECO Blueprint Fellowship award and has been featured in numerous exhibitions at venues including Trask Gallery at the National Arts Club (New York, NY), Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center (Solomons, MD), "MoRA" - Museum of Russian Art in (Jersey City, NJ), and other notable institutions.