Masha Kashyna (1991) expresses herself on vibraphone and soprano saxophone, which results in audio-visual performances with her own moving visual language. Masha, born and raised in Ukraine, has been living in Germany for several years. Her interest in socio-cultural and artistic movements is translated into a cross-genre and trans-medial way of working.
Her path to Germany went through her mother, who played street music as an accordionist in the city center of Hanover a few years ago. As a sound and media artist, she is a hybrid of Ukrainian classical training and rebellious street culture. This is evident in her affinity for what is “underground”; for that which looks to the future rather than the past; for that which awakens global culture shaped by local coloring and experimentation from underneath.
As a producer and multi-instrumentalist she is touring solo and with the duo Nustoriya. Several feature projects with performance groups like She She Pop and Tarek Atoui, with dancers Pia Kröll and Viktoria Skrypnyk and live painters/muralists J. S. Sanner, Zagalaksy, Kartel, Alexander Mick, Igor Zaidel, Dimitra Kousteridou brought her to Poland, Greece, Malawi, Portugal, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Lithuania, Ukraine and Germany.
From 2012 to 2018, Masha studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim. In 2015-2016, she continued her studies at Bilgi University Istanbul (TUR) in composition, production and documentary film. During her ethnomusicology master at the Center for World Music (Hildesheim), she focused on researching sound and activism in Ukraine.
Her key words are “transformations”, “balance”, “integrity”, “creative resistence”, “trial & error” etc.