Anastasia Pilepchuk is a Russian multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. She was born in Yakutia with a mix of Buryat roots and Ukrainian infusion. Her art is versatile, shown in different creations, projects and collaborations, but there is one that specially captures people’s interest: mask-making. Her œuvres are influenced by her cultural heritage evoking images, sounds, and textures of the past and present bringing identity and transformation to her wearable art. In this interview we dive deep to understand her view as an artist and to discover her unique process.
1. What idea or desire led you to start creating your masks? And how did your roots influence your work?
I think it started from a quiet desire to listen, not to people, but to what lives underneath them. Masks became a way to touch memory, ancestry, and things that don’t have words. Growing up with Buryat roots, I was surrounded by stories where spirits, animals, and humans constantly transform into one another. That sense of fluidity stayed in my hands. I don’t make masks to hide a face, but to remember what existed before the face.
2. Your masks often seem to breathe between worlds, heritage and futurism, ritual and invention. When you create, which world do you feel you belong to the most?
Honestly, I don’t feel like I fully belong to any single world. I feel most at home in the space in between, where the past has not finished speaking and the future has not fully arrived. Creation happens for me in this soft, foggy borderland, where ritual can look like technology and futurism can feel ancient. That in-between space feels like my true home.
3. Is there a moment in your childhood, a sound, a ritual, a story, that still guides your hands when you sculpt?
For me it’s not a single moment, but a collection of sensations. The scent of sun-burned earth mixed with thyme and pine trees, the sound of wind in open space and the way light breaks through massive blocks of ice frozen deep in Lake Baikal etc. These memories live in my body rather than in words. When I sculpt, my hands often return to those textures, smells, and quiet landscapes.
4. Your work with biomaterials feels almost alchemical. What emotions rise in you when you touch something living and turn it into a face?
There is tenderness, and also a strong sense of responsibility. Working with living materials feels more like a conversation than an act of control. SCOBY, agar, organic textures already have their own will, and I follow it. Very often I’m genuinely amazed by the result, as if the material knows something I don’t.
5. Berlin is a city of reinvention. Has living there changed the way you relate to your Buryat roots?
Berlin actually sharpened my connection to them. Being far away made me listen more closely to what I carry inside. In a city where everyone is constantly reinventing themselves, my roots became an anchor rather than something to escape from.
6. When you collaborate, do you feel parts of your personality shifting as well? What version of you appears in those shared spaces?
Yes, different versions of me appear through collaboration. I really enjoy the chance to try on different roles and different types of interaction. I like not only sharing, but also learning. Through collaborations I’m able to look at things from another angle and rethink them in ways I couldn’t do alone.
7. If you could wear one of your own creations to express your current emotional state, which one would it be and why?
In one interview I said that if you place all my masks in a line, they would become a perfect illustration of my biography. Each mask was created at a very specific moment of my life and carries that moment inside it. What I felt, how I saw the world, and what I was going through. Choosing one mask is like choosing a chapter of myself. Right now, I am in the process of creating a mask that feels like the most accurate expression of my current emotional state.
8. Behind all the materials and symbolism, what is the quietest truth you hope someone feels when holding your mask?
My quietest truth is simple. I hope a person slows down. That they begin to notice small details, the textures, the way the world is built from tiny, living elements. I want them to feel the subtle flows of energy that exist around us and within us, and to remember their own presence in that moment. I also hope they sense that nothing exists by accident, that we are here as part of a larger balance, and that it is important to live in harmony and value what the universe has given us.
9. Is there any place you would like to participate, expose, or talk about your creations?
I don’t really like to plan or dream about specific places. I prefer when places find me. Of course, there are major galleries I would be happy to collaborate with, like any artist. But what matters most to me is the atmosphere of a space. If I resonate with it, that connection can become the most meaningful collaboration.
10. Do you have any upcoming projects or collaborations? And what is your dream as a mask-maker artist?
I have several upcoming collaborations that I will be sharing soon on my Instagram. As for my dream, it is very simple. To be in harmony myself, and to share that harmony with the world through my work.
