About
Artist behind the world of YaYu.
Who I am, what I carry, what I make.
I build a world
I am Anastasiia, a Ukrainian artist based in Barcelona. I work primarily in ceramic sculpture; my practice also extends into 3D and watercolour.
My sculptures are inhabited by YaYu — genderless, timeless beings. They carry objects on their heads: memories. I see memory this way, physically, above the head, and I believe identity is built from it. What we remember is who we are.
YaYu are the protagonists of a world that holds other creatures, forms and places too. I have been building it since 2023, and it is larger than I am.
I left Ukraine in 2022 because of the war. Since then memory stopped being an abstraction for me — for a time it was the only stable ground I had. That experience is in the work, though the work is not about war.
It is about what a person carries in order to remain themselves.
Under the Shell, 2026
Me at 4, with my grandpa, grandma and Juliett (my dog)
Before I had words
The way I see things started in childhood.
I grew up between two homes — with my parents, and often with my grandparents. Both were full of trees, fruit, and things to investigate. I ate apricots unripe, climbed for cherries, came back with hands stained black from mulberries and green from walnuts. Time moved differently then: slower, wider, with room for everything.
Value lived in small things — a snail after rain, a pocket heavy with something I had found and decided to keep.
Those years are not a subject in my work. They are closer to a language — the one I speak before I think. Softness, weight, texture, presence: I understood all of it before I had words for any of it.
The world of YaYu grew out of that.
How clay found me
For a long time I worked in 3D, drawing forms in digital space — I could shape almost anything there. At some point I wanted those forms out of the screen, in a material that could hold them. I signed up for my first ceramics class; we were making the portrait of a young girl. That is how I met clay.
What kept me was the freedom of shaping forms straight from the mind into matter. Clay accepts what you bring, and keeps what you give it. I had spent years imagining forms. Now I could hold them.
My current series The Carried began in 2026. The bodies of sculptures are left as bare stoneware, unglazed. Only the object each one carries is glazed. I want the contrast to be visible: the body simply exists, the memory shines.
Studio, Barcelona, 2026
