Back to the Roots

How does the cre­ation of your stu­dio relate to the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of Ukrain­ian culture?

I start­ed FAINA after the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion in 2014, in Ukraine. It was a cru­cial time for us, a moment of renais­sance in terms of self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. I start­ed to revis­it our sym­bols and crafts and incor­po­rate them into new forms in design. It felt very organ­ic and empow­ered me a lot. The world didn’t know much about Ukraine, and I was dri­ven by a desire to share our cul­ture and its beau­ty. I see FAINA as a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple striv­ing to fos­ter soci­ety-wide activity.

One of the out­puts was an excep­tion­al event called Land Inspires, which you orga­nized in 2018 and 2019 and I was lucky enough to attend it. What moti­vat­ed you to do it?

FAINA didn’t start as a busi­ness. It was about our Ukrain­ian iden­ti­ty, val­ues, and tra­di­tions that we would like to pass on. I want­ed to do more, to show how strong and cre­ative Ukraine real­ly is, the his­to­ry we have. The right for­mat for the design expe­di­tion didn’t come to me for a long time, and one day I just had a vivid dream about it. From the sub­con­scious came the answer I had been look­ing for. For many of our arti­sans, it is the work of a life­time, passed down from gen­er­a­tion to generation. 

Their knowl­edge is ines­timable, there is tremen­dous depth behind it. So I want­ed to sup­port them, to inspire the whole world with their work and to show how their tech­niques can be revived in mod­ern expres­sion. It was an enrich­ing expe­ri­ence for both sides. To go deep, to remind our­selves of the great val­ue and his­to­ry we have. It helped our guests under­stand Ukraine bet­ter. They told me that it was life-chang­ing for them, some­thing that will stay with them forever.

Which arti­sans do you usu­al­ly work with?

We work with crafts­men from all over Ukraine. The core of our tapes­try for Design Miami/Basel was made in the Carpathi­ans. Our arti­sans used a tra­di­tion­al wool weav­ing tech­nique, and then our team added oth­er lay­ers. This was the syn­er­gy of times, an exam­ple of how tra­di­tion con­nects with moder­ni­ty. For the works in glass, we col­lab­o­rate with crafts­men from Lviv, a city in the West of Ukraine. The tech­nique of free­blow­ing is more than 1000 years old and is still used only there. Clay work is main­ly done in the Kyiv sub­urbs. Our arti­sans make ceram­ic decor for us, but also sculp­tur­al holed facades for our cabinets.

Your prod­ucts are named after tra­di­tion­al musi­cal instru­ments, sym­bols of Ukraine and even smell like Ukrain­ian clay. Why?

Ukrain­ian cul­tur­al codes and tra­di­tion­al forms influ­enced my work a lot. But it’s not some­thing I sim­ply look at and take inspi­ra­tion from. It’s already inside me, I grew up with it, and I retrans­late it into the lan­guage of my design. It is a huge part of my “live design” phi­los­o­phy. Many objects resem­ble what I used to see, the essence of the source itself stays rec­og­niz­able, but it is nev­er direct. The Soni­ah floor lamps are Ukrain­ian sun­flow­ers, but the light­ing itself is very prim­i­tive, even a bit rough in tex­ture because of the sculpt­ing technique. 

When I cre­at­ed the Ban­dura set, I first drew a sym­met­ri­cal shape of the main vase and then added a small­er one to bal­ance it. Only with the time did the mean­ing revealed itself. The Ukrain­ian ban­durists, men who played ban­dura (a tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian musi­cal instru­ment), went from vil­lage to vil­lage, pass­ing on our his­to­ry through their songs. They were often blind and trav­elled with guides. Uncon­scious­ly, I drew a big and a small ban­dura vase, lat­er real­iz­ing that the small one was actu­al­ly sym­bol­ic of a guide, who trav­elled with and lead a bandurist.

What mate­ri­als do you focus on?

Our mate­ri­als come from the Earth – wood, wool, clay. I do not main­tain mate­ri­als in a tra­di­tion­al way. I retell and pre­serve the tra­di­tion so it doesn’t lose its mean­ing, but do so with­in a con­tem­po­rary con­text, a new vision. I share the love for tra­di­tion in a mod­ern way.

You have also devel­oped your own sus­tain­able mate­r­i­al, Ztista, which com­bines clay, recy­cled paper, wood scraps and applied on a recy­cled steel or card­board base. What was your motivation?

Our live design phi­los­o­phy is based on work­ing with liv­ing mate­ri­als, and I want­ed to cre­ate our own ful­ly sus­tain­able mix­ture. For me as a per­son and for us as a brand, it’s very impor­tant what we leave behind. I respect the Earth, I always try to think of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Today’s design needs an over­haul – more sus­tain­able archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­ors, prod­ucts. The tech­nique we applied for Ztista was on the sur­face. It is the tra­di­tion­al wall-fin­ish­ing method, known to all Ukraini­ans. Some­thing very native.

What can Ztista be used for?

Almost every­thing. We use it for sculpt­ing chairs, tables, light­ing. I love that the result is unique every time. There are no two iden­ti­cal objects, which makes each piece even more valu­able. Right now we are work­ing on a spe­cial art project using Ztista.

What role and weight do you think young design­ers and researchers have in con­tem­po­rary design?

They move this world and bring a broad­er, more volu­mi­nous vision of it. It always inspires me a lot to see new per­spec­tives on what may seem well-known or obvi­ous. It’s also an ongo­ing process and the com­mit­ment we made as a brand long ago. So I am in a con­stant search-and-exper­i­ment mode. At the moment, we are devel­op­ing a ful­ly sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing for FAINA.

You oper­ate between Kyiv and Antwerp, where you also have your main show­room. How has liv­ing abroad influ­enced you?

The pace of life is very dif­fer­ent in Bel­gium. In Ukraine, we move and make deci­sions much faster. But some­times you can lose the joy of the moment. That’s what I learn from the Bel­gians – their art of slow­ing down.

How did you man­age to break into the inter­na­tion­al market?

It’s been a long jour­ney. In the begin­ning, in 2014, we were lit­er­al­ly invis­i­ble, but became suc­cess­ful thanks to the essence of the brand, the dis­tinc­tive prim­i­tive style we have formed. FAINA also has a great respon­si­bil­i­ty. We were the first to rep­re­sent Ukraine at major inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tions, we appeared in Vogue or Archi­tec­tur­al Digest as “Ukrain­ian design”. Year after year, we went deep­er into our craft, orga­nized work with our crafts­men, who often lived so far out that they did not even have a sta­ble net­work con­nec­tion, we devel­oped our sin­gu­lar visu­al language.

What was your break­through project?

Ban­dura vas­es and Top­tun arm­chairs I guess. They were the first to become pop­u­lar and got atten­tion from the glob­al press and world­wide clients.

What kind of peo­ple make up FAINA’s clien­tele? Is there any way to define them?

Very con­scious, edu­cat­ed, open-mind­ed peo­ple, for whom val­ues are impor­tant and who are look­ing for a soul in an object. They want some­thing spe­cial and authentic.

Last year at Salone del Mobile you also pre­sent­ed a new col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lasvit. Can you tell me more about it?

I have known and loved Lasvit long before, I loved the way they worked with glass and the unique things they were cre­at­ing from it. A few months before Salone del Mobile, we received a call from Art Direc­tor Max­im Velčovský with a pro­pos­al to devel­op some­thing togeth­er. We had almost no time, but impos­si­ble tasks are what dri­ves us even more. In the end, it was the fastest col­lab­o­ra­tion in the his­to­ry of their brand.

Tell us more about Sluhach.

I‘ve my own style that I work in – it’s liv­ing min­i­mal­ism. It is sim­i­lar to naive art or prim­i­tive art. In Ukraine, prim­i­tivists are very strong, it’s relat­ed to our cul­ture, our world­view. So as an artist I also inher­it­ed these fea­tures. With Lasvit, we made lamps that are very dif­fer­ent from their per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. I want­ed to cre­ate some­thing that would give the brand a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, so the lamps come in very prim­i­tive shapes. 

But this prim­i­tivism is imbued with a deep mean­ing. A strong mes­sage is key for me in every expres­sion. Sluhach means ‘lis­ten­er’ in Ukrain­ian. But lis­ten­ing here is not in the sense of hear­ing. It is about a state of feel­ing and under­stand­ing, about knowl­edge. When you hear not what is said, but what is meant. Under­stand­ing the nature of things.

Is Sluhach your first real­iza­tion in glass?

I’ve want­ed to work with glass for a long time. Dur­ing Sum­mer Sol­stice 2021, in Paris, we pre­sent­ed a lim­it­ed series of flu­id vas­es craft­ed with the ‘gut­nyt­st­vo’, a tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian tech­nique of free blowing.

What advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages do you think glass as mate­r­i­al has?

Ini­tial­ly, I want­ed to cre­ate the light­ing larg­er, but this was not pos­si­ble because of the nature of the mate­r­i­al. In gen­er­al, glass is very liv­ing, it has a dual nature com­bin­ing strength and fragility.

FAINA’s port­fo­lio is real­ly broad – it ranges from acces­sories to fur­ni­ture, to light­ing. Do you reg­u­lar­ly design for oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers as well or are these rather exceptions?

This year, we have divid­ed FAINA col­lec­tion and my lim­it­ed-edi­tion designs, and in the future I will focus more on col­lab­o­ra­tions. When you bring togeth­er dif­fer­ent ener­gies and worlds, some­thing spe­cial always comes out.

In addi­tion to the FAINA, you also work as an inte­ri­or design­er at the epony­mous stu­dio YAKUSHA. What kind of inte­ri­ors does YAKUSHA create?

I love when an inte­ri­or is ‘liv­ing’. Nat­ur­al mate­ri­als and tex­tures, a sense of puri­ty, every object appears to be a har­mo­nious part of the space as if it’s always been there. Also, I love when the inte­ri­or is nat­u­ral­ly bal­anced, so I jux­ta­pose and com­bine a lot. New and old, big and small, smooth and rough.

How would you actu­al­ly describe your­self and your work? What is most impor­tant to you, whether you are work­ing on a prod­uct or cre­at­ing an environment?

It may sound strange but I asso­ciate myself with the Earth. Vast and pro­lif­ic. I am an archi­tect, design­er, cre­ative direc­tor, artist. I nev­er had lim­its in expres­sion. I am a huge fan of niche per­fumery and a few years ago I just felt like cre­at­ing my own fra­grance for the home. I did not know any­thing about its cre­ation process, but I knew that I want­ed it to be the scent of Earth her­self with a touch of raw, humid soil. 

The per­fume seemed very lay­ered, com­plex, I think I expressed my essence through it. All my projects reflect my world­view, how I think and what I feel. A few months ago, we start­ed work­ing on a rede­vel­op­ment con­cept for Cherni­hiv, one of the old­est Ukrain­ian cities, heav­i­ly dam­aged by Rus­sians dur­ing the war. I went into this because I want­ed to con­vey the DNA of this city, to estab­lish a sol­id foun­da­tion for its fur­ther development.

Your phi­los­o­phy could be described as “live min­i­mal­ism” and “mod­ern prim­i­tivism”. Can you explain what exact­ly the these two lines are?

Live min­i­mal­ism reflects my con­nec­tion to Ukrain­ian roots and nature and my world­view as an archi­tect. I am always drawn to clean lines, very prim­i­tive, and speak with shapes rather than with col­ors. Prim­i­tivism is pure expres­sion, min­i­mal­ism is also about puri­ty. We call our min­i­mal­ism ‘live’ because of liv­ing ener­gy. I con­nect with things or spaces only when I feel them as if they were alive. When the object tells a sto­ry, when it has a mean­ing and a soul. In my per­cep­tion, liv­ing objects are usu­al­ly made by hand, mate­ri­als come from nature. That’s what I was look­ing for in oth­er brands before I designed FAINA.

We can’t avoid the top­ic of the Ukrain­ian-Russ­ian con­flict. Does it affect you personally?

It is not a con­flict, it is a war. Rus­sians have invad­ed our land, and what is hap­pen­ing now is a true geno­cide of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. The war is only geo­graph­i­cal­ly in our coun­try, but in real­i­ty it has long been out­side Ukraine. It is a war of val­ues, a war for the future of the whole world. I feel every event of this war deeply and painful­ly and expe­ri­ence a great admi­ra­tion for my peo­ple, their strength and courage.

What are the cur­rent con­di­tions for design­ers in Ukraine? Are they able to work as before?

After Feb­ru­ary 2022, almost every­one has been in sur­vival mode for 3–4 months, try­ing to put them­selves togeth­er. There was no cre­ativ­i­ty in your head at all, it was the hor­ror that fills you from the inside out. But after a while, that hor­ror turns into an under­stand­ing that you have to keep mov­ing. That’s each person’s way of let­ting life win over the death brought to our land. Maybe the life theme has not yet man­i­fest­ed itself in cre­ativ­i­ty. But I think design­ers will work with this nar­ra­tive because it is exact­ly what we exude, and it is our atti­tude, our choice, our deci­sion. It’s like our posi­tion in life. We choose to live, no mat­ter what.

Is it pos­si­ble to make any plans in this situation?

Ukraini­ans are encour­aged to resist by doing their reg­u­lar activ­i­ties as much as pos­si­ble. So we keep doing what we like. We pre­pare new col­lec­tions, focus on col­lab­o­ra­tions and projects on the verge of art and design. Since the begin­ning of FAINA, I felt my mis­sion to pass on and pre­serve the Ukrain­ian cul­tur­al her­itage and want­ed to build a museum. 

Even under these harsh cir­cum­stances, we have already start­ed work­ing with the Maria Pry­machenko Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion to make it a real­i­ty. I real­ly hope it will mate­ri­al­ize as soon as pos­si­ble and every­one will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy Ukrain­ian cul­ture in per­son. For the time being, there are at least ambas­sadors of our cul­ture such as FAINA.

Vic­to­ria Yakusha is a Ukrain­ian design­er and archi­tect behind the mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary archi­tec­ture, cre­ative direc­tion, inte­ri­or and prod­uct design stu­dio YAKUSHA since 2006 and the brand FAINA since 2014. Vic­to­ria received her archi­tec­ture degree from the Pryd­niprov State Acad­e­my and the Insti­tute of Nation­al Applied Sci­ences (INSA) in France. She is deeply inspired by Ukrain­ian cul­ture and tra­di­tions, which she tries to express through design and archi­tec­ture. She has cre­at­ed her own unique style of “liv­ing min­i­mal­ism”. Her works stand out for their lacon­ic but sen­su­al approach. They are full of tex­tures that engage all the sens­es and invite you to feel the soul of the objects. Since 2022, Vic­to­ria Yakusha has been part of the Lasvit fam­i­ly with the Sluhach light­ing collection.