In a war-torn country fighting for survival, some weapons are ink and memory. Nastya Bondarenko.
This is the story of a Kyiv tattoo artist who doesn’t just decorate bodies—she marks history onto skin. Nastya’s studio is a place of ritual, where ancestral symbols meet wartime scars. Soldiers come for protection, and civilians come to be seen. Every line she draws is both personal and political—a form of spiritual armor against cultural erasure.
In a quiet upstairs room filled with sketches, coffee, and humming machines, tradition is being rewritten one tattoo at a time.
A Visit to the Ink Sanctuary
Walking through the door, I stepped into a studio that felt more like a sanctuary than a place of business. A large, open space gave way to a dark-toned interior, rich with artwork. Paintings by the studio’s founder hung above old green leather sofas. Tattoo books lined the tables beside a gleaming espresso bar — a setup worthy of any high-end café. This wasn’t a back-alley parlor. This was a temple.
To the right, a man sat quietly as a scorpion was etched into his shoulder. Above us, the high ceiling seemed to breathe. Light poured through a full-length window across the wall. A staircase curled upward to the first floor, where Nastya’s studio awaited.
She welcomed me dressed in all black — a blazer with sleeves pushed up to reveal forearm tattoos, a black-and-white patterned choker echoing traditional Ukrainian embroidery, and short bleached hair that framed her face with authority. We sat beside a wall of her ink drawings, sunlight grazing our chairs. The machines hummed below.
Nastya
“Each tattoo I create is a ritual. A spell for protection. A mark of memory.”
The Artist and the Fire Within
Nastya is more than a tattoo artist — she’s a theatre performer, a former web designer, and now, a cultural practitioner on the edge of ritual. Before the full-scale invasion, she lived a comfortable life in tech. But when the war broke out, stability lost its appeal. ‘If not now, when?’ she told herself.
She switched professions and walked straight into uncertainty. ‘Tattoo artists were like gods to me — untouchable,’ she said, laughing. Now, she sits among them.
She says she’s shy. But in person, she radiates power. Her voice is confident. And her words, unflinching. Her art is precise, feminine, fierce — all at once.
From Prison Stigma to Sacred Practice
Tattooing in Ukraine has not always been viewed as art. ‘It used to be only for criminals, prison tattoos in basements,’ Nastya explains. However, the studio where she works, founded in 2003, helped change that. It’s now home to one of Ukraine’s earliest tattoo museums, showcasing machines, styles, and history. Now, people come not to hide ink but to reveal something sacred.
Her Philosophy: Each Tattoo is a Spell
To Nastya, tattooing is not decoration. It is transformation.
‘Each tattoo I create is a ritual,’ she told me. ‘A spell for protection. A mark of memory.’
She never repeats a motanka design—each one is created uniquely for its wearer. The motanka, a faceless doll from Ukrainian folk tradition, appears in her work as a protector, mother, warrior, and witch. Sometimes, they’re born from her own pain—after a missile strike or a sleepless night—becoming fierce women rising from the sea to destroy the enemy.
‘I’m not a witch,’ she says, and then grins. ‘But maybe I’m close.’
Reviving Culture Under Siege
Before the invasion, she wasn’t deeply connected to Ukrainian culture. But the war changed that.
‘Russia tried to kill our artists, our scientists, our writers,’ she said. ‘For 400 years, they’ve tried to erase our culture. And if you destroy the culture, you destroy the nation.’
Now, she studies old patterns, learns the symbols of each region — from Poltava embroidery to Carpathian rituals. Her tattoos are modern altars. They whisper stories once nearly lost.
She is one of many artists reweaving the national fabric, one inked thread at a time.
Symbols, Spirits, and the Stories They Carry
Her tattoos are full of spirit figures: forest witches, sea priestesses, and druid guardians with antlers. She draws on myth, animism, and archetypes.
One Belarusian soldier came to her for a full-sleeve motanka. Others want symbols of strength, rebirth, and ancestral memory. Her art fuses Ukrainian spirituality with personal storytelling — a protective grammar written in skin.
Even the faceless dolls she tattoos carry meaning: crosses across the eyes protect against the afterlife, a tradition rooted in ritual doll-making that predates Christianity.
The People Who Come
Nastya’s clients are varied—soldiers, witches, yoga instructors, astrologers, women who’ve lost everything, and men who are going to the front.
‘Some come to feel protected. Others to remember, and become whole again,’ she says. ‘Afterward, they say: now I’m full.’
They don’t just want a tattoo. They want an anchor in this world, a link to their roots, a silent guardian on their skin.
What I Carried Away
When I left the studio, I felt different—like I had brushed up against something sacred. Nastya is not just inking skin—she’s remapping identity.
In this war, everything feels fragile—life, memory, language. But here, inside this Kyiv studio, tradition becomes defiant. Symbols become armor, and the body becomes a canvas for remembering who we are.
She is not just marking people. She’s helping stitch a wounded country back together — one line at a time. Nastya Bondarenko, Nastya Bondarenko, Nastya Bondarenko, Nastya Bondarenko.
