Anna Kamyshan was born in Lviv, Ukraine in 1988. An architect, artist, and curator, she works across architecture, urbanism, and socio-cultural research. Educated at the Strelka Institute in Moscow, she later pursued postgraduate social science studies in Manchester, UK. Her practice spans environmental projects, memorial installations, and future-oriented initiatives addressing memory, ecology, and post-war reconstruction in Ukraine and beyond in Europe.
Architect, artist, and curator Anna Kamyshan was born in Lviv, Ukraine in 1988. She was educated in architecture and social theory, developing an interdisciplinary approach that combines spatial practice, research, and artistic experimentation. Kamyshan graduated from the Strelka Institute, Moscow, where her early interests focused on urban transformation, environmental systems, and the social consequences of large-scale infrastructural development. She later undertook postgraduate studies in social science at the University of Manchester and the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES), expanding her engagement with philosophy, political theory, and environmental thought. These academic foundations informed a practice that integrates architecture, socio-cultural research, and speculative futures.
From 2014–19, Kamyshan worked at the architectural practice Meganom, Moscow, where she was involved in long-term research projects. During this period, she curated and led the Moscow River project, examining the environmental degradation of the river and the political, industrial, and urban processes that shaped its condition. In 2018 she co-founded Moscow River Friends, an unofficial grassroots public organisation. The initiative proposed an alternative ethical relationship between humans and natural systems, framing the river not as a resource, but as a subject with which humans might establish a form of ‘friendship’ based on mutual care and non-exploitation (e-Flux). The research culminated in the exhibition The Moscow River Age, presented at the 2019 Milan Triennial as part of Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival. The project was awarded the Wax Bee Prize and later featured in the Venice Biennale publication project Voices, which received a Special Mention. Through this work, Kamyshan articulated a model of environmental engagement that combined artistic practice, education, and speculative urban futures.
In 2019, Kamyshan joined the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) in Kyiv as Director of Conceptual Development, a position she held until 2021. She also served on the Architectural Advisory Board of the Babyn Yar Foundation. In this role, she contributed to the development of a comprehensive 100-year vision for the Babyn Yar territory. Known as the Landscape Horizontal Museum concept, this long-term framework reimagined the site as a living landscape in which memory, commemoration, ecology, and everyday life could coexist. The plan integrated multiple artistic and architectural interventions aimed at healing historical trauma through spatial and environmental processes. Within this context, Kamyshan authored the memorial installation, A Glimpse into the Past, unveiled on 27 January 2021 to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The installation was opened with the participation of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. Located on Beresteiskyi (Pobedy) Avenue in Kyiv, the work consists of two stone boulders embedded with monoculars through which visitors view archival photographs taken in the autumn of 1941 by German photographer, Johannes Hähle. Between the stones lies a tree with broken branches, a symbol rooted in Jewish funerary tradition and used as a metaphor for lives cut short and severed connections to family and history. By situating the installation within a busy urban environment, Kamyshan sought to interrupt daily routines and prompt reflection on historical violence and the fragility of the present.
Alongside her memorial work, Kamyshan has developed further projects. The Castle of Yiddishland, created for the Yiddishland Pavilion in Venice, imagines lost wooden synagogues floating above contemporary cities. Inspired by René Magritte’s The Castle of the Pyrenees, the project reflects on Jewish displacement, diasporic identity, and cultural resilience, evoking a homeland sustained through memory rather than territory. Following the outbreak of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022 and her displacement from Ukraine, Kamyshan co-founded Mriia, an initiative dedicated to imagining the long-term future of Ukraine beyond immediate reconstruction. Through Mriia, she contributed to Re: Mariupol, an alternative vision for rebuilding the occupied city that addresses infrastructure, ecology, and social renewal, and foregrounds the necessity of long-term planning during ongoing conflict.
In 2022–23, Kamyshan was appointed Academic Sanctuary Fellow at University College London and became a research fellow at the Jencks Foundation for Architecture at The Cosmic House in London. Her research focuses on the Portrack Seminars convened by Charles and Maggie Jencks in the 1990s, mapping their transdisciplinary discussions on post-modernism, ecology, science, and spirituality. Drawing on Charles Jencks’s diagrammatic methods, she is developing a visual project that traces the emergence of a new post-modern cosmology. This research informs her parallel work on the Dnipro River, Ukraine’s largest river, examined as both an ecological system and a political subject. Based in London, Kamyshan continues to work across architecture, artistic practice, and research, addressing memory, ecology, and the long-term futures of societies shaped by historical violence and environmental crisis. Her work is not currently represented in UK public collections.
Irene Iacono
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Anna Kamyshan ]
Publications related to [Anna Kamyshan ] in the Ben Uri Library