Victoria Unikel is an American artist, media mogul, and President and co-founder of VUGA Group, a portfolio of 17 companies across 4 continents.
Her training was classical. As a child she was found to have perfect pitch and graduated as a professional cellist from the Gnessin School of Music, the top USSR school for gifted children. Later she graduated with honors from GITIS, the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts, founded in 1878 and once chaired by Stanislavsky.
As an actress she has appeared in film and television productions and performed on stages in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, France, and the United States in lead and supporting roles. Her television work includes series that ran to sixty and ninety episodes.
In music she has been writing, performing and releasing for more than twenty years. She created the gothic rock band Exorcist, writing its music and lyrics, and performed in the industrial project Unikel and the darkwave project Balance. Her catalog is published by The Orchard, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment; her albums have sold more than 200,000 copies. She founded Unikel Records, an independent label for industrial rock and dark cinematic music.
As UNIKEL she has been painting and exhibiting in galleries since 2008, working across painting, mixed media, photography and sculpture. Her collections include MONEY, WAR, GENDER, NEW YORK and the mixed-media DIAMONDS. She founded Trancerealism, an art movement in which the work is channeled from the Universe rather than observed. In 2019 her work took the top art prize at the MOSAIC Federation gala at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York.
One of Victoria's latest projects is EXORCISTA dark universe. It began as a single show and has grown into four: Games of Souls, the flagship dark anime; Dark Fairytales, a cinematic retelling of true classic fairy tales; Secrets, Spells & Shadows, a horror and true-crime podcast with two full seasons; and Magic Lab, which tests real rituals on camera. The universe has more than 133,000 subscribers and received a YouTube Silver Creator Award in 2026.
Her debut novel, Emma + Luke = Disappear to Nowhere, a sci-fi adventure for readers aged nine and up, is distributed in over 50 countries. A full-color manga edition is in production, and Book Two is on the way.
In media and TV, VUGA Group includes VUGA Media Group, VUGA PR Services, FashionBrava, VUGA TV, Virtuoso TV, Gossip Stone TV, 24Fashion TV, VUGA Enterprises and VUGA Publishing. In technology, AI and engineering: AgentPrizm, ViralPrizm, LogisticsPrizm, Edison Aerospace, Shoreline Protection and Black Swan Net. In film and music: Apollo Film Production and Unikel Records. Its four TV networks reach 600M+ devices on iOS, Android, Android TV and more; its digital network runs 100+ newspapers and magazines, and its PR practice places work in 1,000+ publications.
From 2008 to 2012 she ran her own clothing line in Germany. Her current project is FashionBrava, the professional network for everyone who makes fashion, launching in September 2026.
She is President of the VUGA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) art non-profit supporting emerging artists through exhibitions, film production, cultural programs, and festivals.
Her work has been covered by Forbes, ELLE, L'Officiel, The New York Post, The Independent, Daily Mail, The Sun and many others.
