“God Is My Curator”: On the Ukrainian Artist and Curator Anastasiia Pasichnyk
“Pochemu?” … “Fuck!” exclaims Anastasiia Pasichnyk, the twenty-four-year-old artist and founder of the Ukrainian Cultural Community (UCC).
Moments earlier she had arrived at the idyllic grounds of the Schönhausen Palace, a baroque estate north of Berlin’s city center. Once home to Prussian princes, it now houses exhibitions, one of which features work by Anastasiia herself. We’ve agreed to meet here so that Anastasiia can give me a tour of the exhibit, “Ukrainian Art in Exile,” and tell me more about the creation of the UCC. But there’s a problem: it’s closed. Hence the swearing and muttering in Ukrainian.
Instead, we settle in the Palace’s Garden, where we sit at an outdoor café and order oat milk lattes. “Life is beautiful,” Anastasiia sighs, apparently undeterred by the change in plans. In June 2022, she founded the UCC, which functions both as an independent gallery and as an arts collective. So far, the UCC has contributed to multiple exhibits around Berlin, collaborated with Uniqlo on a t-shirt collection, and housed twenty artists in a former Charlottenburg brothel-turned-commune. When I ask Anastasiia how she managed all this in such a short period of time, she responds bluntly: “It’s refugee syndrome. I don’t sleep.”
Born in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Anastasiia trained as an actress, appearing as an extra in music videos by Miley Cyrus and the German rapper Apache 207. In February 2022, she had a meeting scheduled with Kharkiv’s mayor to lease a space in a former bank, with plans to turn it into an art gallery and residency program. Then Russia invaded her country. As normal life was upended, and no meeting possible, Anastasiia began volunteering at a medical center in Lviv. She eventually left Ukraine altogether, escaping the war and staying with friends in Dresden, Germany.
Still, Anastasiia refuses to see herself as a victim. “My position here, I’m not a victim,” she declares. The Ukrainian Cultural Community was originally called Art Shelter, a name Anastasiia quickly changed when she realized the possible connotations. “Shelter is for people who need help. But I’m not a shelter, I’m not a victim. All this stuff I did, I did with thankfulness. Thankfulness for surviving, for my life. When you are thankful, you start to be bigger, and you have more and more and more. One artist, I forget his name, writes nice phrases with paint. He wrote God is My Curator. And this is what I really feel, it’s not me,” (The artist she refers to is the multidisciplinary painter, illustrator, and photographer Richie Culver). 
‘God is My Curator’
Richie Culver 2020
In Dresden, Anastasiia applied to art residencies across Europe; her only reply came from a program in Berlin. Their residency was full, but they had a friend who was renting out a space in a former brothel. Was she interested? Anastasiia took it sight unseen and decided to start her own artist residency program in the new space. Then known as Art Shelter, the initiative had over one hundred applications for its very first call. Anastasiia picked twenty artists out of the hopefuls, with the residents arriving in Berlin from across Ukraine. They immediately set out to restore the former brothel (at first, there was no heat or running water) and began hosting small events and concerts in order to fundraise.
Their first major exhibit took place in August of 2022. Titled “Testament of Hanna” and held at the UCC’s headquarters, it featured the work of the fourteen-year-old artist Hanna Mishchenko. In March 2022, Mishchenko was attempting to flee Bucha with her mother and two other female civilians when their car came under Russian shelling. The car caught fire, and all four passengers died. In “Testament of Hanna,” the many drawings and paintings that Mishchenko left behind were showcased for the first time. The UCC also hosted a charity auction in tandem with the exhibit, with proceeds from the sale going towards Mishchenko’s surviving family.
Another exhibit, “Kolyska,” was held this past June—July at the Kurt Muhlenhaupt Museum in Kreuzberg. Curated by UCC member Sofia Golubeva and featuring the work of Anastasiia and other young Ukrainian artists, it played upon the multiple definitions of the Ukrainian word “Колиска” (“Kolyska”). Meaning a swing, a baby’s crib, or “motherland,” the word served as a metaphor for the artists’ current state of mind. Anastasiia explains her “swinging feeling” and the extremes her life has alternated between since Russia’s invasion: “War; happiness. Surviving; living peacefully. Staying in your country and living with the feeling you could die any minute; leaving your country and being afraid about the people you left behind. Sirens starting; sirens finishing.”
To illustrate these polarities, Anastasiia bought a swing from a father in the Carpathian Mountains and replaced the seat with a bed of nails. Originally built for his children to play on, the swing’s new construction represented, according to Anastasiia, “the killing of childhood. 1,600 kids have been raped or killed by the Russian army. They don’t have a normal life.” However, the nails also drive home the anguish, for Anastasiia and many other refugees, of leaving Ukraine. “The most painful part is not when you sit on the swing, but when you stand up. It’s leaving that hurts the most.”
The whole collection sold, and thirty percent of the proceeds from every piece went toward victims of the Russian assault on Kherson. However, despite the success of these shows, Anastasiia has faced challenges while running the UCC. To begin, many of her residents were suffering from PTSD and other psychological problems as a result of their experience in the war. Several of them turned to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope. “I don’t judge them,” Anastasiia says, “because of course I understand. But me, as director, what am I supposed to do?” Then, a few months ago, without warning, the owners of the former brothel space evicted her. She, along with her twenty residents, was suddenly without a home. The landlords also claimed that she owed them 10,000 euros, and although she disagreed, she had no choice but to pay. Anastasiia moved in with a friend and pieced together the money, eventually paying off the sum in full. Since then, the UCC has been without a space, and its future is uncertain. Still, Anastasiia refuses to give up.
“I talk a lot with all my friends. They tell me, you’re finished. Close this UCC, start something new. But I think, fuck off!”
For now, Anastasiia is planning more shows, creating more art, and caring for her teenage brother who lives with her in Berlin (their parents remain in Kharkiv). She continues to contribute to exhibits like the one inside the Schönhausen Palace (“Come back!” she tells me re its closure, “Say you are with the UCC!”) and do acting and performance work on the side. Her ultimate goal, however, is to keep building cultural bridges between Ukraine and other countries. “The war will finish, and then what?” she asks probingly. “For me, it’s more important to make something for young generations, to keep inspiring them.”
Even so, Anastasiia remains humble. “I think,” she confesses as we say goodbye at the palace’s gates, “I think that in five years I will be able to call myself a real curator.”
Images via @avangard_nastya