Travel to Art Award 2025: Where Creative Voices Meet Miami Energy
On December 12, Miami once again became a meeting point for creative leaders from across the globe as the annual Travel to Art Award took place at Millecento by Pininfarina – an iconic venue overlooking the glittering lights of Brickell by night.
Hosted by Marta Alexandrovna, the evening unfolded in an intimate, elegant atmosphere, with live musical energy brought by singer Elen Smile. Over glasses of sparkling wine, guests reflected on the highlights of Art Basel Miami 2025, exchanged ideas, and celebrated this year’s award winners – the people shaping the future of the creative economy.
A Platform Beyond Awards
Held annually in December as part of Art Basel Miami Beach, the Travel to Art Award recognizes leaders across creative industries whose work contributes meaningfully to cultural development and economic growth in the United States. Winning the award is not only a professional milestone, but also a marker of international recognition.
The 2025 edition focused on three core goals:
- creating a professional platform for dialogue and collaboration among creative leaders,
- spotlighting innovative cultural projects shaping the U.S. creative economy,
- and strengthening international connections between culture, business, and communities.
About Travel to Art Magazine
The award is organized by Travel to Art Magazine, an international publication officially registered in Florida, USA. The magazine’s mission is to explore how culture directly shapes the economy – and to highlight people and projects where creativity becomes a driver of cities, industries, and global markets.
According to UNESCO and UNCTAD, the global creative economy generates approximately $2.3 trillion annually, with the United States contributing nearly $1 trillion each year – a figure that underlines the sector’s strategic importance both nationally and globally.
Winners of Travel to Art Award 2025
This year, seven outstanding creatives were honored across multiple categories.
Masters of the Word – Writers & Screenwriters
Winner: Yulia Strokova
A Miami-based writer and journalist whose work stood out for its strong authorial voice and contemporary narrative approach. The jury paid special attention to her mastery of storytelling and original content creation. The award was presented by Dmytro Zelenov, an international screenwriting expert and jury member.
Space Creators
Olena Shabanova — Best Interior Designer
With a strong European professional background, Shabanova approaches interiors not through decoration, but through structure, logic, and architectural thinking. Shaped by her work in Ukraine and Europe — where designers operate as strategists, engineers, and curators of living scenarios — she brings depth and systemic thinking to the U.S. market, gradually shifting it from surface aesthetics toward value-driven design.
Visual Arts
Valeriia Kuzmina — Best Home Newborn Photographer
A Miami-based lifestyle and documentary photographer who treats motherhood and family not as genres, but as living stories. Working with natural light and minimal intervention, she captures emotional honesty while also building an educational platform and community that sets a more conscious direction for the future of family photography.
Tamarina Anastasiia — Best Wedding Photographer
A representative of a new generation of wedding photographers, Anastasiia sees photography as an authentic process rather than a scripted performance. Her strength lies in emotional sensitivity and quiet observation, allowing moments to unfold naturally. Working across European and U.S. markets, she frames weddings as part of the creative economy — where memory, space, and human connection intersect.
Fashion & Beauty Industry
Anna Petrovska — Best Costume Designer
A fashion designer and researcher working at the intersection of body, movement, and psychology. Through her project Beyond Size, she challenges traditional industry standards by creating adaptive garments that adjust to people — not the other way around — shaping a new ethics of conscious fashion.
Additional honorees included:
Bibi Lawrence — Best Fashion Designer
Veronika Haidai — Best Colorist
International Jury & Global Perspective
The 2025 jury brought together six professionals, including two previous Travel to Art Award winners. Among them:
- Flávio Iryoda, founder and editor-in-chief of Avessa Magazine
- Dmytro Zelenov, writer and screenwriter
- Vlad Sludskiy, art curator and founder of Qazart
- Emil Akhundov, art director of The MOST Magazine
- Lex Melony, London-based filmmaker and CEO of LEXME Media Group, founder of the OFN LGBTQIA+ Film Festival
- Hanna Boiko, healthy hair and coloration expert, known for her science-based, ethical approach to beauty and her contribution to shaping a new, responsible beauty culture in the U.S.
Partners & Cultural Collaborations
Partners of Travel to Art Award 2025 included Dallas Fashion Week, Millecento by Pininfarina, and Ukrainian sculptor Astian Rey – the creator of the award sculpture.
The official media partner was UK-based Flicker Magazine, part of LEXME Media Group, a platform covering art, film, entertainment, and actively supporting the queer creative community in Europe.
Among the creative partners was also OL’SVOL’D, a Ukrainian artist working in abstract sacred art. His projects explore color and form as tools for introspection and meditation. In 2024, OL’SVOL’D received the Travel to Art Award in the Editor’s Choice category.
The Sculpture Behind the Award
The Travel to Art Award sculpture was created by Astian Rey, a Ukrainian sculptor known internationally for his expressive, raw approach. Working with electric welding and combining metal with concrete, he draws inspiration from the ancient Winged Victory of Samothrace. His interpretation of Niké reflects femininity, confidence, and unstoppable movement forward – a symbol of inspiration and achievement.
Ukrainian Leaders of the Creative Industries — Semi-Finalists of Travel to Art Award 2025
Gayane Arushanian is an artist and sculptor working with ceramics as a medium for capturing the inner force of life. Her series Abstract Animals emerged at the intersection of destruction and transformation — at a moment when external chaos demanded an internal decision to continue living. Created during the first months of the full-scale war, these works are not a direct reaction to events, but a profound artistic response: a conscious choice of existence, movement, and breath even in conditions of vulnerability and rupture.
Each sculpture is entirely hand-built — layer by layer — with an intentionally hollow interior that becomes a metaphor for the human journey through chaos toward inner harmony. The forms of Abstract Animals are both instinctive and architectural: they carry animal energy, bodily memory, and structured strength, as if the material itself remembers every stage of transformation.
Samuel Gurskiy is a Ukrainian artist working at the intersection of socially engaged painting and new artistic forms. Born in Kovel, he lives and works in Munich. His practice combines protest, freedom of self-expression, and the search for a new visual language and dialogue in contemporary art.
He began drawing in early childhood and organized his first exhibitions as a teenager. Paintings created on broken furniture using construction paints, murals, socially charged graffiti, participation in a music band, and the founding of an independent art movement that united young artists and musicians from several cities have all shaped his multidisciplinary path.
From graffiti and murals to large-scale canvases executed in his own distinctive technique, Gurskiy’s works incorporate numbers, seams, and experiments with texture. There are no rigid rules or academic constraints here — only raw inspiration. It is about the freedom to be oneself, even when the world imposes frameworks and limitations.
The series The Language of Numbers is an idea that existed for years and has only now found its full realization. Textures and numbers on canvas create a mystical yet meaningful composition, reflecting contemporary life — money, time, bills, purchases, and plans. Numbers have filled our existence and become the language of modernity.
His paintings reflect the era in which we live — an attempt to capture the truth of our time. Through art, history cannot be erased or distorted.
Yana Panius is a Ukrainian artist who approaches painting as a space of emotional experience. Color, movement, and the image of water play a central role in her work, serving as symbols of inner journey, memory, and transformation. Her visual language is intuitive and speaks directly to the viewer’s inner state, moving beyond literal narrative.
Alongside her studio practice, Yana Panius develops art-travel formats and plein air projects that connect art, place, and personal experience. Within the context of Travel to Art, her work reflects a contemporary understanding of art as a living process — a dialogue between the artist, the environment, and the individual.
Looking Ahead
According to Oleksii Didihurov, founder and editor-in-chief of Travel to Art, the project has evolved far beyond a magazine. Today, it functions as a global communication platform with its own ecosystem and international creative community – a voice advocating for the growth of the creative economy in the United States.
The editorial team is already preparing for the next Travel to Art Award, scheduled for December 6, 2026, during Art Basel Miami on South Beach.
