Zhenya Machneva was born in 1988 in Leningrad, USSR (Russia).

In 2011 Zhenya graduated from the Artistic textiles department of the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design. In 2012-2013 she studied at the educational program «School of young artists», organized by Pro Arte Foundation and St. Petersburg branch of NCCA.

The artist started her trajectory with depicting time-worn factories, abandoned production sites and lonesome places of post-soviet space. Suspension of the decay process points out the moment of transgression and forms up a close and meaningful connection with a weaving technique. Author creates all the tapestries manually, working with classic looms in her studio, and letting expressions flow through hands and threads. The collection of mechanisms’ elements and industrial machines’ parts and its transformation into woven fabrics started as an archival work, but through time has become an act of making a new world. The world which is inhabited by zoomorphic and anthropomorphic creatures which fairly remind obsolete remains of the industrial epoch.

Zhenya Machneva was part of big international shows, for instance: 59 th Internationale Biennale di Venezia The Milk of Dreams (curated by Cecilia Alemani, Venice, Italy) the New Museum Triennial 2018 (New-York, curators – Alex Gartenfeld and Gary Carrion-Murayari), the Ural Industrial Biennial 2015, 2017 (Artist-in-residence program, curator- Zhenya Chaika), Moscow international biennale for Young art (2012, 2018). She was nominated for the 2013 Sergey Kuryokhin Prize (St.-Petersburg, 2013). Laureate of the Institut Francais program for the Cite Internationale des Arts residency in 2017  and of Académie d’Architecture in 2022 (Paris). Participant of the group show “One Within The Other. Art of New and Old Media in the Age of High-speed Internet” in Moscow Museum of Modern Art 2016 (curators Andrey Egorov, Anna Arutyunyan).

The selected personal exhibitions include ones in GP & N Vallois Gallery in Paris (2018, 2020, 2022), Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo (2021).

Since March 2022 she lives and works in Paris, France.