FAINA: The Shape of Vitality & Drevo

FAINA: The Shape of Vitality & Drevo
On view: June 26– July 15, 2025
Opening Hours: 12 – 6 PM
Ukrainian Institute of America | 2 E 79th Street, New York, NY 10075

This summer, the Ukrainian Institute of America hosts FAINA: The Shape of Vitality & Drevo, a two-part exhibition by Ukrainian architect, designer, and artist Victoria Yakusha, founder of the live design brand FAINA.

Bringing together a decade of creative evolution with a new body of work, this exhibition invites viewers into a world shaped by memory, presence, and the vitality of form.

The Shape of Vitality: A Decade Retrospective

Spanning over ten years of design, The Shape of Vitality gathers FAINA’s most iconic pieces — a living archive of forms that reflect the brand’s vision of design as a conduit for emotion, connection, and life itself.

Each object is charged with presence. The SONIAH floor lamp rises like a beam of light — a sculptural symbol of renewal. The KUMANEC vases echo the joyful silhouettes of Ukrainian pottery. The fluid lines of the PLYN armchair channel the quiet motion of water and being. And DOMNA, one of FAINA’s most emblematic forms, grounds the viewer in ancient rhythms that endure.

Vitality flows through these works — a quiet pulse that moves through each object, connecting the visible to the unseen.

Drevo: Ancestral Memory in Steel

Presented alongside the retrospective, Drevo continues the exploration of cultural memory through a powerful new medium.

Drevo — Ukrainian for “tree” — is a collection of engraved steel panels rooted in the ancestral symbol of the Tree of Life, once painted by Ukrainian women on the clay walls of their homes. These symbols were protective and sacred, filled with intention.

Taken from ethnographic sketches from the Podillia region, Yakusha reinterprets traditional motifs — spirals, birds, branches — with precision and reverence. Each line is engraved by hand using metalworking tools, transforming these once-ephemeral gestures into lasting forms.

Every panel in Drevo carries a traditional Ukrainian woman’s name, honoring the generations of women who painted their strength, care, and identity into domestic spaces. In Yakusha’s hands, these works are not relics — they are living vessels of memory, spirit, and feminine power.

Together, The Shape of Vitality and Drevo offer a meditation on presence — what we inherit, what we carry forward, and how form becomes a language of connection across time.

About Victoria Yakusha

Named one of Dezeen’s Top 50 Women in Design and Architecture, Victoria Yakusha is a Ukrainian architect, designer, and cultural heritage advocate whose multidisciplinary practice bridges contemporary design with ancestral traditions. She is the founder of FAINA, a “live design” brand rooted in Ukrainian cultural memory and environmental consciousness. Trained in Ukraine and France, Yakusha is known for her philosophy of “live minimalism,” blending modernist clarity with natural materials and vernacular craft. Her work spans architecture, furniture, lighting, and sculpture, acting as a vessel for memory, resilience, and transformation — a living language of cultural continuity.