Denys Rzhavskyi

I · Film

In 2012 he graduated from the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts with a Master's degree in Film and Television Arts. Denys Rzhavskyi began in cinema. In the 2010s he led the Ukrainian Film Association, working to develop the national film industry — the campaigns, the distribution, the argument that Ukrainian film deserved its own audience. A 2013 interview in KP.UA captures the tone of that chapter: "Now it is finally possible to fall in love with our cinema." The film years taught him the two crafts he never put down: how a story is built, and how a frame is kept clean.

II · Music

In July 2017 he founded Happy People (Счастливые люди); in 2018 the band released its debut album "Dataism" on the Masterskaya label — spoken word over electronics, in a genre the band named themselves: crypto-pop. The record argued with its decade — blockchain, code, Harari's dataism — in the voice of poetry rather than punditry. A year later came the collaboration that is still the most widely reported: «Почему не падает небо» (2019), released together with Boris Grebenshchikov — a reworking of a 1978 Aquarium song, made with his blessing and his cameo. The band's orbit grew: The Maneken on «Воин пришёл» (2020), releases with My, Лолита Косс, Таро; an Italian-language alias, Persone Felici; and the soundtrack «Благая весть!» for LEVGENIY — a film Denys conceived and co-authored with director Asya Nikolaeva.

III · Kintsugi

Kintsugi is a Japanese tradition of visible repair. Denys uses Master of Kintsugi as the artistic name of a method that runs through his books, music, images and digital work. It is not presented as a Japanese craft qualification. The point is not to erase the break but to leave it visible in a new form — in images, songs and people's stories alike. Out of this grew Kintsugi Gallery, which represents the painter Evgeniy Lapchenko — whose "Garden of Earthly Delights" hangs in the 906 World Cultural Center in San Francisco — and the Dataism Temple, a slow, curated on-chain gallery.

Master of Kintsugi is Denys Rzhavskyi's artistic identity, not a claim of traditional Japanese craft certification.

IV · R愛

In 2025 he began again, alone, as R愛 — a name that joins "I / я / ja" with the Japanese 愛, love. The debut single "I BASHO" (January 2025) carries his songwriter and producer credits; "YESNESS" followed. Zen poetry over electronic textures; he calls the spirit "new samurai."

V · The Book

In 2026 he published his first book — "SHI · A Way of Seeing": four pillars (love, death, time, presence), short chapters, each ending in a single sentence to carry with you. Not philosophy, not doctrine — optics. The book grew out of four conversations recorded at night, for no one; it now exists in six editions — English, Ukrainian, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Indonesian — sold worldwide. A second book followed: 'God. The First Vibecoder', published 24 July 2026.

VI · Now

Today everything he makes lives in one place — The Best Place: painting and edition, music and book, the touch game SHI, the Temple, the gallery. Different rooms of one house, kept slowly. Care over noise.