Born in 1985 in Leningrad and graduated from the Rodchenko Art School, Moscow, in 2011. That same year she was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in the Best Young Artist category for her video “Eggs” (2010). In 2016 Kanis received the Sergey Kuryokhin Award in the Media Object category for her film “The Pool” (2015). Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including a solo show in Haus der Kunst Munich (2017), the parallel program of Manifesta 10 and the 2015 edition of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art. From 2017-2018, Kanis was a resident artist in the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten program in Amsterdam.