Living so close to others with only thin concrete walls separating us from our neighbours it looks like we have become even more isolated. People can hear a person next door snoring, yet, not even know her name. Yet, even though we might not be conscious of it, living with others brings a certain sense of comfort and community to our lives. What if the whole huge multi-story building was all yours? What kind of games would you play there? Would you feel happy or sad? This project is a fantasy where I try to imagine visual answers to those questions.

A thought of a tunnel may evoke two opposite emotions simultaneously. It’s scary, because you’re about to enter the darkness, but it brings hope for a better future with the light in the end. For centuries tunnels have represented journeys, yet sometimes they symbolize the passage from one phase of life to another. Rebirth in a new form, either physically or mentally, and the journey of metamorphosis is usually very painful.

This project is dedicated to dealing with change in the outside world and making peace with it on the inside. Every tunnel has the other side, often bursting with light and hope. It is the contrast of the tunnel’s darkness that gives light its power and resonance.

From my early childhood, I considered clouds to be my friends. They were always there when I needed them. They bought comfort and shade on a hot sunny day, they took shapes of different animals and wonderful creatures, when I was bored or sad, they were white and grey when I needed rest and colorful and bright in the lights of dawn or sunset when I longed for adventures. They were always changing, but they were always there. Inspired by my childhood memories this series is dedicated to my cloud friends and all the wonderful moments we had together.

Everything that you see and hear around you is your brain's reconstructed model of the world. This is not how the reality actually is. It's how you perceive it. If so, why not play with those perceptions and imagine a whole new reality? Plain, simple, calm, and clean. It can be our new home where we have space for unexpected thoughts and novel ideas, a space where we can rest and reevaluate our positions, where we can learn ourselves better so that we can go on our life quest and be more prepared for what's coming next.

There’s a fashion in everything. Even in ideas being spread. We can catch some like viruses and be absolutely sure that we now found the truth and discovered our way in this world. We cling to the illusion that now we have it under control.

The project is exploring how beautiful ideas like human connection, self-love, visualization of dreams to make them come true, positive thinking, caring for the planet, and finding peace often get twisted in the minds of those who catch them like a virus without going too deep into understanding what’s really behind. The project is an attempt to speculate what happens when an idea is downgraded to a fashionable trend and becomes just another trait of the mass culture.

The name of the project was inspired by David Bowie’s album name “Plastic Soul”.

“The more important a call or action to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” - Steven Pressfield “The War of Art”

Newton’s 3rd law of physics says: “To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction”. Often we feel this very concrete law of physics in our psychological struggles. Every attempt to grow, to do something new, to learn, and to develop will inevitably face some kind of reaction. Something be it our environment, family, circumstances, but most often our own beliefs and self-talk don’t allow us to make our next steps and attempts to block the growth.

This force, this resistance can come in any shape or form: indecision, negative self-talk, procrastination, conflicts, fear, doubt, self-sabotage, shame, guilt. This project attempts to show in a metaphorical way all those types of things that can block our creativity and growth. My hope is that every person, facing the resistance of some kind realizes that, in the end, the resistance it’s not real and can be blown away like a piece of paper when you know exactly why you need the growth and why you want to create.

It was a big decision for me to take portraits of my parents in the first place. Not because “I had to” or they expected me to, but because I wanted to do it, I REALLY felt like it. It suddenly occurred to me that this is how I viewed them (or better sensed, because I wasn’t consciously thinking about them this way ever) t.

Mom has always been full of energy, both productive and distractive. The fast and the furious. She was the “fire” in my life: she could keep me warm, but she could really burn me at times. Saying it in the past tense, because I describe my childhood perspective of things, and frankly, my childhood, the psychological one, lasted for too long. Only now do I feel like finally have grown up and have become disconnected from all the past emotions, traumas, fears, expectations, and hopes that little Dasha had.

My mom is the hero of my life and I really want to state that with this portrait. She’s strong, powerful, fearless. She endured and still does much pain in her life, but that didn’t and doesn’t brake her. She gave me the fuel and the courage to do many things in life, both genetically and by her own example, and for that I’m endlessly grateful.

I really feel that the color and the vertical lines in the background reflect the strength, assertiveness, and energy that I have always seen in her.

My dad has always been a quintessence of calm and emotional control. I never, and I mean NEVER even once, saw him getting angry or bitter about anything in life. He always seemed steady and stable, and even boring and lacking change, and cold sometimes. He could stop any fire and heal any burn with his relaxed coolness.

I didn’t appreciate it much, when growing up, but later in life the stillness that he transferred to me paid off immensely. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I never took a more grounded, cold, calm, and controlled view of life situations I’ve faced. I am hugely grateful to have inherited this part from my father.

I tried to convey the cool and calm stillness of my father’s soul through the horizontal lines, absence of details, and the color palette, which is comprised of various shades of blue and grey.

I almost cried when editing the works. Finally accepting my parents as people, not as gods that they have always seemed to me when I was a child. I didn’t want to make them prettier, I didn’t want to retouch too much. The portraits are about acceptance. They are being themselves and I am accepting them as they are. And accepting myself through this process.

Strength, honesty, calmness, all of those qualities can be seen as magical powers of supernatural creatures sometimes. This is my take on how the magical beings empowered with those qualities might look when seen in a world almost identical to ours. Those are fairies and their images are inspired by my innate fascination with illustrations in children’s books and the works of artists like Nicoletta Ceccoli and Ray Caesar. Why the big eyes? Every child knows that the eyes are the most important part of a human face when you draw it.

No one has all the answers. Even if it seems so, sometimes. It’s the uncomfortable truth. So we’re bound to make up our minds and then change them over and over again. Does change have to always be painful? Can we approach it as play? It’s up to us to decide. And then change our mind again.

We are used to the fact that what we see is what we know. Seeing is believing. However there are myriads of things and phenomena which we don’t see, yet they are real. At the same time, our brains can be tricked into seeing something that is not actually there. Each moment in life we’re switching between real and unreal, seen and unseen. This project is inspired by this constant process.

What if you take a new approach to flying and turn the idea of "being grounded" upside-down? Yes, some things in life are impossible, right until they become... possible! Challenging your own beliefs, and rules you've set for yourself even once in a while, and just for the fun of it may have amazing power. It helps you not to take yourself and life around you too seriously. Because what is the world around us rather than the Universe just entertaining itself?

We all want a certain amount of surprise in our lives, otherwise living would be boring.

But too much change and uncertainty are overwhelming and painful. This is why all the major breakthroughs in human history and development were not welcomed by the masses.

We all want that our life experiences are the same and safe, but different and challenging/entertaining at the same time.

Trying to play with the notion that you can’t enter the same river twice and imagining like one and the same, the very familiar and plain image of a horizon line above the sea can be viewed from multiple different angles.

All of us need wandering time, time to just ramble without a definite purpose or objective. The time when you detach and disconnect, and sort of feel like a separate molecule just dwelling between substances, not sure a part of which you want to become. The wandering times lead to wonderful shifts in our perceptions and often mindsets and ways of living. But it's so scary to just wander away from what is so comfortable and familiar into the unknown. And even scarier to just do nothing. Just wander.

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.” - Alan Watts

With dance, dancing itself is the goal, there's no final point or destination. This is how life is. Otherwise, everyone would want to arrive at our final life destination as soon as possible. We can definitely arrive somewhere while dancing, as we're constantly moving with the dance, but arriving is not the point. It's the process of the dance itself that we enjoy while doing it.

Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it, we believe we are nothing. All meaning, everything we understand about ourselves and the world, is constructed for the purpose of maintaining hope. Therefore hope is an inherently crucial component of a healthy psyche. Yet, while hope is the solution to our personal problems, it is also often the cause of our social problems. Visions of hope, when pursued far enough, have destructive consequences. They also make us suffer, if we don’t get what we hoped for.

Perhaps, doing something not hoping for any good outcome is the most courageous thing we could do. There are no guarantees, yet we do it anyway. Then, if we get a positive outcome it’s a pleasant bonus.

There is no one best way to do anything. There are many great ways, as many as there are people, views, and perspectives. Finding a single "right" point of view is impossible. If you think you're right all the time, it's a delusion. That's why when we look for solutions and learn, we become a little "less wrong" with every step.

Uncertainty has always been feared and disapproved of. Yet, people who are uncertain in their beliefs tend to be more tolerant and broad-minded. They change their minds about the world around them more easily and eagerly, constantly upgrading their perspectives. Those upgrades usually don’t come instantly, but in a series of little events, thoughts, epiphanies, and life situations. The project speculates on such instances presenting them in a metaphorical way. The more uncertain people are the more open they are to learning. I hope there’s more uncertainty in the world.

Unmute and live your life to the fullest. See what’s possible. Explore the variations and embrace what’s possible. And accept that everything is possible. Find what resonates with you and dive deep into that.

The ultimate joy of color and exploration of it hypnotizing combinations. Their depth, intensity, and power.

“Princess and the pea” is a “textbook” fairytale and like every fairy-tale, it doesn’t make much sense and yet has lots of hidden meanings if you search for them. This series includes visual speculations and expansions on those possible meanings and morals. The danger of making assumptions, a big role that small things can play in life, being true to oneself, and never jumping to conclusions might be the important lessons found in the simple text for children if you’re willing to take in its wisdom.

Whatever we usually refer to as “human nature”: the uncontrolled emotions, irrational actions, lack of thinking, is usually the reflection of the animal origin in our brains. We are tiny cells in the giant organism of the Universe. We’re connected to everything around us and to each other. Then why do we often feel so unique, different and isolated? The project is speculation on this controversy.