BIO
Dasha Shu (ex Dasha Raiskaya) is a mixed media artist from St. Petersburg, Russia.
Born and raised in a small town on the banks of the Volga River. She studied at art workshops in academic drawing and painting. By education, Dasha is an artist and interior designer. She graduated with honors from the university in 2013.
In 2018, Dasha studied at the school of academic photography in St. Petersburg. She took her first photo at the age of 6. Since then, she has dabbled in various genres of photography. Photography for Dasha is a visual art and a way to communicate with the world, without words.
Among the achievements of interviews and publications in Russia and abroad in such publications as PRIVATE, DODHO, Float Photo Magazine, Photo VOGUE, The Eye of Photography, F-STOP MAGAZINE, Landscape Stories, russian media project “s-t-o-l”, Bildinside, Don’t take pictures.
In 2019, Dasha, with her project The Fisherman’s Daughter, was shortlisted for the Felix Schoeller photo award in Germany. The nomination is the best work of a novice photographer.
In the summer of 2023, Dasha completed the Art Boost Residence at the GetArtFit school, where she came up with the project feeling.HOME.
She is now focusing on art projects. Through projects, Dasha can talk about what excites her. In her works, Dasha strives to combine different media and materials — photography, installation, collage, ceramics, wood, drawing and sounds.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The main tool of my creativity is photography and work with projects. Through projects, I live personal psychological experiences, passing all emotions and feelings through myself. My photographs are not staged, but caught in the moment. Only then do I build a narrative and complex stories through metaphors and images, conduct fictional dialogues with people, things, places and myself.
For me, creation and creation is more important than the result, since creativity is an endless process.
The main topics of my research are the knowledge of the inner world of a person and a fictional external illusion through documentary and art photography, through personal experience and experimental experience with various natural materials, through things from the past and new created ones.
Now I am interested in working with such mediums as photography, sound, installation, sculpture, collage, drawing, graphics, printing. I’m interested in experimenting with different materials and convey certain sensations in my work. All attempts to find, create and capture are part of an endless process, part of life itself.
CV
EDUCATION
2021 — “Prodlenka photobook” course to create a photo book, Academy of Documentary and Art Photography, St. Petersburg
2020 — “Diary — a new reading: Project thinking” author’s course of Ekaterina Vasilyeva, St. Petersburg
2019 — “Portrait” author’s course of Yana Bulgakova, St. Petersburg
2019 — “Genres of photography from the point of view of the 21st century. Think in a project” author’s course of Ekaterina Vasilyeva, St. Petersburg
2018 — study at the School of Academic Photography, St. Petersburg
SELECTED EXHIBITION
2020 — Don’t take pictures, group online photo exhibition “THE VIEW FROM HERE”
CONTEST/ PHOTO AWARD
2019 — FELIX SCHOELLER shortlist, nomination in the Best Work by an Emerging Photographer category
RESIDENCIES
2023 — Art Boost Residence, School GetArtFit
PUBLICATIONS
PRIVATE, DODHO, Float Photo Magazine, Photo VOGUE, The Eye of Photography, F-STOP MAGAZINE, Landscape Stories, Russian media project “s-t-o-l”, Bildinside, Don’t take pictures