Nastya Norway

Nastya Norway, born in 1989, is an artist from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. She graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering with a degree in design (2011) and subsequently began her career as an artist, complementing her education with participation in the Proscenium performance laboratory (2017) of the Provmyza art group. She has organized several solo exhibitions, including "Northernness" at the Loosen Art Gallery in Rome (2025) and “Details" at the Record Cultural Centre in Nizhny Novgorod (2023). Her work received the A-list Society Award in 2022. In her art, Nastya Norway explores corporeality and internal vulnerabilities at the intersection between the intimate and the social. She works in painting and graphics, as well as digital collage, and experiments with street interventions.

My name is Nastya Norway, I'm a young artist living in Russia. My creative journey began in a children's art studio, where my teacher was the wonderful local artist Sergei Rodionov. The atmosphere there was incredible—we enthusiastically painted, went plein air, and had tea with bread and homemade jam. And every year, on Christmas Eve, we painted decorations for the holiday on huge sheets of paper. Our class was immersed in a magical and fabulous atmosphere. After a joyful celebration, we took down the decorations and threw them off a nearby bridge into the river.
My studies at the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering were inspired by my passion for urban architecture and product design. I took part in two major architectural festivals. As a team, we worked on creating conceptual small-scale architectural objects. The result was such incredible objects as "Ashtray Bench" and "Forest Bottles," which were widely acclaimed by exhibition visitors and were recognized by the competition jury.
Then another stage in my work began, and I shifted my focus to painting. I became fascinated by the human body. The foundation of my painting practice became the exploration and depiction of the human body, its plasticity, sensuality, and eroticism. I create memorable images based on a view of humanity through socio-cultural and political processes, using simple materials for my paintings. Through understanding real objects and reflecting on inner pain, I invite the viewer to look deep within. I mentally replay the image of an object, its tension and vulnerability, imagining and touching it mentally. Through exploration of the hidden and concealed, I move deeper, exploring its essence. I capture the sexuality and sensuality of the body. I draw lines that later become a stain. For me, my drawings are an attempt to depict a suppressed feeling, an inner experience; they are an imprint of essence and character. The workings of the works are carefully conceptual. They reveal layers that combine realistic (inspired by nature), photographic, constructivist, conceptual, and quotational approaches. The flat, yet fluid, depiction of the volume of the human body, its deliberate flattening, creates a subtle, painterly quality. This creates tension and contrast, enhancing the structure of the painting as an object.

The next stage arrived and coincided with the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine. For me, this is a vivid example of the confrontation between modernism and a vanishing archaic world, and any statement disloyal to one side or the other is immediately criticized. I couldn't close myself off from all this. A protest arose within me. I am still immersed in this theme. It is very important to me. And it revealed a different side of me. I began to try my hand at street art. I dedicated several of my works to this protest.