Ukrainian designer Victoria Yakusha opens an otherworldly new Miami gallery

Victoria Yakusha Miami Gallery — (Image credit: Gabriel Volpi)

Since starting her practice two decades ago, architect Victoria Yakusha has become Ukraine's most dominant design voice.

Yakusha's work — which spans buildings, interiors and collectible design — is firmly rooted in the traditions, materiality and mythology of her native country. Her charming sculptures created with her firm’s design arm, Faina, especially, have become a fixture at US design fairs and the design awards circuit. To wit: as part of Design Miami’s 2.0 section last December, Yakusha unveiled The Land of Light II, a series of pleasingly-round sculptural animals made from ztista, a sustainable plaster she’s developed.

While Yakusha, who splits her time between the US, Belgium and Ukraine, has brick-and-mortar galleries in Kiev and Antwerp, and sells her work online, Americans looking to experience her work need to see it as part of a dedicated exhibition or a fair. No more: this month Yakusha opened up her first dedicated design gallery in the US in Miami’s Design District.

For the designer, the opening provides the perfect way to further introduce her practice to US audiences. ‘My work is built around physical presence — material density, surface, scale and the way light interacts with form. These are qualities that can’t be fully communicated digitally, no matter how refined the image,’ Yakusha explains to Wallpaper*. ‘I wanted to create a place where objects could be experienced in real time, through the body as much as through the eye.’

The gallery, located in a low-slung building on the periphery of the Miami Design District, is the embodiment of Yakusha’s design values — ‘calm, grounded and quietly expressive,’ she explains.

The space is quite literally, ensconced by her home country: the walls are finished in natural clay that was shipped from Ukraine, a move that lends an organic, earthy sensibility. This earthiness is contrasted with sleek stainless steel cabinetry which displays design objects, including lighting and smaller animal sculptures, and softly diffuses light from the storefront’s generous windows.

At the gallery’s centre is a round ‘island’ containing mosses and plants in a soft circular mound. Amid the dove-coloured clay walls and against the stainless steel shelving, it's at once a nod to Miami's lushness and a surreal portal to another world.

‘I want visitors to feel a sense of lightness and harmony the moment they enter. This is not a space designed for quick consumption. It’s meant to slow people down — to encourage observation, reflection and sensory awareness,’ Yakusha says.

Yakusha wants to create not just an exhibition space for her most recent objects, but a cultural hub, a place where people can attend a lecture or an intimate gathering. In doing so, the designer says, ‘[The gallery] becomes a place where people can return, where relationships can grow, and where the work can be understood in a deeper, more layered way.’

‘On a personal level, this moment feels both grounding and energizing,’ she reflects. ‘It’s a point of arrival, but also a beginning.’

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Anna Fixsen is a Brooklyn-based editor and journalist with 13 years of experience reporting on architecture, design, and the way we live. Before joining the Wallpaper* team as the US Editor, she was the Deputy Digital Editor of ELLE DECOR, where she oversaw all aspects of the magazine’s digital footprint.