In “Malovana”, a new exhibition from September 25 to November 24, 2025, at the National Museum of Ukrainian Decorative Art in Kyiv, architect and designer Victoria Yakusha brings the forgotten design language into the present. Discover more.
“Malovana”, a New Exhibition by Architect and Designer Victoria Yakusha
Before wallpaper and decorative plaster, Ukrainian interiors were shaped by the hands of the women who lived within them. They painted floral, avian, and tree motifs on clay stoves, doorframes, and walls, turning domestic space into something deeply symbolic. These murals were among the earliest expressions of interior design in Ukraine: intimate gestures that infused homes with protection, identity, and beauty.
In “Malovana”, a new exhibition at the National Museum of Ukrainian Decorative Art in Kyiv, architect and designer Victoria Yakusha, founder of FAINA and a tireless promoter of Ukrainian culture since 2014, brings this forgotten design language into the present. Conceived and built entirely by Yakusha — from the scenography to the spatial concept — the exhibition transforms the museum’s main hall into an immersive environment that blurs the line between past and future, craft and contemporary design.
Yakusha’s approach treats the exhibition space itself as a kind of home — a vessel for memory and imagination. Soft textile walls recall the warmth of traditional interiors, while rare archival wall paintings, documented by ethnographers over a century ago and shown together publicly for the first time, encircle the gallery like protective walls. These delicate fragments, once painted on clay by anonymous women, now reappear as integral elements of a reimagined interior.
“Drevo” – Tree of Life
At the centre stands “Drevo” (“Tree”), Yakusha’s new sculptural installation composed of 18 stainless-steel panels. Each panel features the original Tree of Life drawings, taken directly from archival ethnographic records. The same motifs were once painted on clay walls by women more than a century ago. The work bridges fragility and permanence: painted gestures now live on in steel. Each panel bears the name of a woman, honoring the hands that turned ordinary walls into expressions of belief and belonging.
Related Article: Victoria Yakusha Presents Drevo: Ukrainian Ancestral Memory in Steel
Interior Design as a Living Language That Evolves Across Centuries
Through “Malovana”, Yakusha examines how interior design — once born from simple, everyday acts — can become a living language that evolves across centuries. Her scenography doesn’t simply frame the archival works; it translates their spirit into a contemporary spatial experience, one that invites viewers to reflect on how design, architecture, and memory intertwine.
“Those women painted knowing their work might disappear — yet they still created,” Yakusha says. “They treated their homes as living spaces of self-expression. I want to give their gestures a new body, one that can grow and evolve within contemporary design.”
For Yakusha, “Malovana” is part of an ongoing practice of activating heritage — not preserving it as static history, but transforming it into new forms that continue to shape how we build and inhabit space today. By reimagining this overlooked chapter of Ukrainian interior design, she shows how the creativity of the past can inform the homes and environments of the future.
Organized by FAINA and the National Museum of Ukrainian Decorative Art, Malovana is on view from September 25 to November 24, 2025, in Kyiv.
Text and Photos: FAINA
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