Victoria Yakusha presents “SHUM” at Salon Art + Design 2025, New York

In November 2025, Ukrainian designer and architect Victoria Yakusha unveils her new installation SHUM at the Salon Art + Design fair in New York — a poetic meditation on the invisible pulse that connects humans and nature.

Rooted in Yakusha’s philosophy of live minimalism, SHUM (meaning “noise” in Ukrainian) invites visitors to experience the rhythm of existence as vibration — to listen, not with their ears, but with their bodies. It is a space where matter breathes, silence hums, and every object becomes a carrier of life’s subtle resonance.

“Noise is the world’s heartbeat — the vibration that unites everything living,” says Victoria Yakusha. “In SHUM, we don’t try to silence it. We listen.”

The installation unfolds as a tactile landscape. Sculptural pieces — the PLYN Armchair, Grun’ Floor Lamps, VOLYKY Benches, and Tree Stump Tables — rise from the ground like echoes of the earth itself. Handcrafted from clay, oak, metal, and wool, they bear the marks of human touch and the passage of time. Light moves slowly across their textured surfaces, awakening the quiet energy of form. The space is still, yet alive — a moment suspended between sound and silence.

SHUM continues Yakusha’s exploration of presence, a theme that defines her work. It asks what it means to exist within nature rather than apart from it. The objects do not perform; they simply are. They resonate with a kind of ancestral frequency — the hum of clay, the breath of wood, the soft murmuring of woven wool.

“We work with materials as with living matter,” Yakusha explains. “Each texture has a voice, each shape carries a spirit. Our task is to listen deeply and translate that presence into form.”

Created in collaboration with Ukrainian artists Diana Demianenko and Ksenia Kravtsova, SHUM dissolves the boundary between design and ritual. Their joint creation expands Yakusha’s vision of design as an act of listening — a way to perceive the spiritual dimension of the material world. Light becomes not illumination, but presence. Each shadow, each vibration of the surface, holds meaning.

The installation is not about spectacle; it’s about intimacy. It calls for slowness — for standing still long enough to sense the whisper of clay, the warmth of oak, the distant echo of something ancient yet familiar. Through SHUM, Yakusha invites the viewer to rediscover the sacredness of noise — to see it not as chaos, but as life’s own music.

Her work often bridges contemporary design and ancestral tradition. Drawing from Ukrainian crafts and natural materials, she brings together modern form and primal essence. In Yakusha’s hands, minimalism becomes emotional rather than sterile — a living, breathing state of being.

“Minimalism doesn’t have to be cold,” she reflects. “It can be human, raw, imperfect. For me, it’s not about less — it’s about depth.”

This approach has shaped Yakusha’s global recognition as one of the leading voices in sustainable and soulful design. Through her studio Yakusha Design and the brand FAINA, she has developed a unique visual language — one that values authenticity, tactility, and time. Her works have been exhibited in Paris, Milan, London, and New York, and featured in international publications such as Dezeen, Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, and DesignBoom.

With SHUM, Yakusha expands this dialogue — turning space into vibration, design into meditation, and matter into memory. The installation is not only seen or heard; it is felt. It exists somewhere between silence and resonance, between the human and the elemental, between what is known and what is sensed.

“In SHUM,” says Yakusha, “we create not objects, but presences. It’s a reminder that everything — clay, wood, air — carries life. All we have to do is listen.”