The Shape of Vitality & Drevo

June 25 – July 10, 2025. New York City

FAINA presents its first-ever retrospective alongside a new body of work — a dual exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of America. Spanning over a decade of creation, The Shape of Vitality revisits the brand’s foundational pieces, while Drevo introduces an evocative new collection that looks both inward and back — to ancestry, memory, and the enduring gestures of Ukrainian folk tradition.

Marking over ten years of creation, The Shape of Vitality gathers an expansive collection of FAINA’s work — a living archive of forms, stories, and energies that pulse with life and memory. This retrospective takes you on a journey through which every curve, texture, and shadow embodies vitality.

The Shape of Vitality: A Decade Retrospective

The exhibition presents objects crafted over the years, with certain key pieces emerging as beacons — moments where the brand’s philosophy and vision come together. The SONIAH floor lamp grows like light, a sculptural symbol of hope and renewal. The KUMANEC vases revive the joy and resilience of Ukrainian pottery, their shapes vibrant with ancestral presence. The BANDURA vase channels the strength of resistance, echoing the song of history and spirit.

Vitality is flowing energy — a dialogue between maker and material, past and present, earth and human touch. It lives in the graceful motion of the PLYN armchair, shaped by the fluidity of water and being. It breathes through the grounding presence of DOMNA, born from ancient forms that connect us to the earth itself.This retrospective is an invitation to sense this vitality, feel the energy embedded in each object, and experience the living pulse that connects all things — the material and the immaterial, the seen and the felt. It's a celebration of life’s endless motion, captured in clay, light, and form.

Drevo: Ancestral Memory in Steel

“Our ancestors understood that a home is not just shelter,” she writes. “It is a living force — a place that breathes, protects, and renews the soul.”

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

CATALOGUE

While the retrospective reflects on a decade of making, Drevo opens a new chapter — one that reaches deep into the collective memory of Ukrainian culture.

Drevo — Ukrainian for “tree” — is a collection of engraved steel panels. Presented for the first time in North America, the works are rooted in the symbol of the Tree of Life, once painted by Ukrainian women onto the clay walls of their homes. These weren’t decorations, but living symbols — protective, generative, charged with meaning.

Using ethnographic drawings from the Podillia region, Yakusha has reinterpreted these motifs — birds, spirals, branches — in a medium built to endure. Each panel is handmade, its lines engraved with traditional metalworking tools. The process is slow and precise. What once lived on clay walls now finds permanence in steel.

Each of the eighteen engraved panels bears a woman’s name — all traditional Ukrainian names. This gesture honors the young women who once painted these symbols by hand, embedding their presence into the walls of their homes. By naming each work, Yakusha acknowledges the personal lineage of this folk knowledge — the stories, intentions, and creative spirit passed down from generation to generation.

Drevo is a continuation of the past. A gesture of transmission. These panels belong in contemporary spaces, not as heritage objects, but as vessels of presence and power. They speak of what we carry, the memory of touch, protection, and ancestral strength.