Pasha Setrova gained acclaim in Russia for her work before immigrating to New York City in 2011. She is a sculptor and performance artist who creates moody storybook imagery in the 3-D form be it with resin, fabric, or with her own breath and body. Setrova creates figures that confound the mind with their sense of wonderment, fantasy, and charm that call out to us from a world of dark whimsy.
Within the human form, Pasha Setrova finds beauty, mystery, and strangeness. With these discoveries, along with inspiration taken from modern day fashion, textiles, pop culture, her own nomadic childhood history in the Siberian tundra to her melancholic ambivalence towards her past career as a model in Europe, Pasha Setrova blends her eclectic experiences together, breathing life into exotic characters that seem to peer out from their frozen selves.
When I was around 15, I started working as a model. I worked for Armani and Versace. I worked in Paris a little and even less in Italy. It was a hard time – it was the time of the world crisis. Then I became a writer, wrote a big novel and got into a very prestigious literary magazine, which was pure luck. I got into a literature college. But I didn’t finish that. I had a crisis of both my Schizophrenia and Epilepsy. Yep. I have both. So while I was being treated, I was staying at home. I started to sculpt, and little by little I became a doll artist. Actually, it was very sudden. I took a One week doll making class. I made a Shakespeare doll out of backing clay and added a lot of details. My teacher invited me on her stand at the doll show. And I sold my Shakespeare right on the first day for $400. I invited my mom to a very expensive restaurant. Because every time I’m getting money from a first sale, I invited my mom to spend that money. Haha. Yeah. That’s how I started I guess.
When I was 24, I started to work as an artist of small forms officially. I got into a good Russian Contemporary Art Gallery along with a doll gallery. I started to make porcelain dolls. The hair company Sebastian invited me to be their visionary and instead invested in my new collection. The collection had very elongated forms with a lot of details. Fashion oriented. I made a very successful collection named “Beaten Glamour” and exhibited in the most popular contemporary art place in Russia. I traveled with it a lot. Suddenly everything had changed. I was invited everywhere. All the interesting parties with all the very famous people became accessible. I was everywhere- on TV or in fashion magazines. I think it’s a thing – once you get a little bit famous suddenly a lot of people are very curious about you.
But then I decided to move to America. For many reasons though one was to have the freedom to be gay. Before I could only dream to be married to as wonderful a woman as Erika. So I came to America. But for a good 5 years, I couldn’t really find any galleries. I think it was for a lot of reasons. My English wasn’t good. Also, I think at the time, my dolls themselves were not speaking to an American crowd, and maybe just in my way of looking for a gallery-I just didn’t know how. It was very upsetting. So I started to make music. I kinda succeeded. At least it was not bad for a very Russian singer haha. But then I met my future wife, and she convinced me that I could do dolls again and that it’d be something good.
I was working for a year on just engineering the joints. It’s not as easy to bring the inner structure to the outside. I wanted to make sure the joints looked natural when fully bent as well as fully straightened positions. But most importantly, I made my shoulder joints. I am very proud of that – not of the joint itself but of what it did to BJD doll world. When I first made it, there were basically no shoulder joints and even if there were, they were very limited and rudimentary at best. Now everyone’s trying it.
© 2023. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Pasha Setrova or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| 3 Sisters |
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| 3 Sisters |
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| Alice flowers |
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| Alice flowers |
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| Alice flowers |
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| Blue dress Eiko |
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| Blue dress Eiko |
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| Bubblegum |
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| Teddybear. |
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| Teddybear. |
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| The Queen and King of Hearts |
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