Ani Svami

Ani Svami is the artist’s name of the Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist and sculptor Anna Naduda, who comes from Kyiv. She completed a master’s degree at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. She has worked in art and sculpture for more than twenty years and has taught since 2009. She makes both small and large-format objects growing out of the “sculpture of nature” and the philosophy of plants; her more recent work is marked by monumental concrete sculptures placed in the public space of large cities. She has helped organise major land art festivals in Ukraine.

She has exhibited in Ukraine and abroad — Kyiv (including the Botanical Garden and the space by the parliament), Paris, Stockholm, Prague, as well as in the United Kingdom and the USA. Her works include “Water Plant”, a half-tonne floating sculpture made of scrap metal and plastic bottles created for the Mural Social Club Festival in Kyiv (2016, organised by the NGO Sky Art Foundation), which collects solar energy during the day and glows at night; and the sculpture “NOVA”, commissioned by the Avon brand.

After the Russian invasion began in late February 2022 she fled Kyiv for Prague. The Czech Centres supported her with a three-month (later six-month) residency, during which she made the sculpture “Berehynia” (The Protectress) — a three-metre object of branches, rope and concrete, unveiled on 5 October 2022 at the Prague Market. The sculpture brings into the present a symbol of Ukrainian culture many centuries old: the protective mother, who grows out of the earth like a tree and shelters her children in her branches. The work was subsequently shown as part of Art in the City 2023 in the park by the cultural centre in Veselí nad Lužnicí. In the Czech Republic she also runs art courses for adults (based in Pohled).