The beautifully bizarre art dolls of Pasha Setrova

A Russian artist based in New York, Pasha Setrova creates striking, gaunt ball-jointed doll sculptures with elements of both fashion and fantasy. The results are nothing short of extraordinary.

According to her artist statement, Setrova’s influences come from “modern day fashion, textiles, pop culture, her own nomadic childhood history in the tundras of Siberia to her past work as a unsatisfied model in Europe, to her personal battles with schizophrenia.”

Setrova has a history as both a high fashion model and a writer. After dropping out of college to pursue health treatment, she took a one-week doll making class and sold her first piece, a Shakespeare doll, for $400. Within a few years, she became famous in Russian contemporary art circles for her elongated porcelain dolls.

On the subject of doll-making, she says, “when I was a child, I believed that dolls could come alive at night when nobody was looking. That’s why I think, to sculpt dolls is so sacred to me.”

Setrova, who is gay, moved to the U.S. in 2011, and struggled at first to become established as an artist in New York. Just a few years ago, she made her first ball-jointed doll, and drew attention for her engineering work on BJD shoulder joints—which took a year of work. She recently won the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize for her Morgantau (‘morning dew’) sculpture, pictured below.

“I didn’t choose my very hard childhood, it was probably chosen for me before I was born,” Setrova said in an interview with Beautiful Bizarre. “Like – you will be born by a 16-year-old woman and she will have to leave you to all these different people and places that don’t want you. But… you will be beautiful. You will be gay and you will be raised to suffer in a homophobic country. But… you will be happily married to a beautiful young woman who is also an artist. You will be unable to have children and will barely be able to maintain your health and struggle every day with it…. but you will be talented in your favorite thing.”

Additional sculptures by Pasha Setrova are pictured below. All photos are via Setrova’s artist website and sales site.