"The world of the arts is intimately ambiguous. In fact, only that which is ambiguous can be considered art." - Philippe Daverio
Natalie Shau has many art tales - fairy, horror, erotica, fashion, surreal - to tell us all. With almost 20 years of career in illustration, photography, and digital art, the artist was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1984, and is now based in the Netherlands.
She chose mainly the feminine as the protagonist of her works and often serves as a model for her pieces, in self-portraits full of mystery and, why not, provocation.
Fashion photography and portraits have always been part of her field of interest and study, and her work presents a very strong cultural background, with images that evoke the religious universe, ancient Nordic stories, and classics of horror and Russian literature.
"I consider myself a dark artist. A lot of my photography is focused on darker alternative and historical fashion, and I am fascinated with designers who not only create beautiful clothes but create something to provoke or confront you. Less about wearability, but pure concept fashion, that can create fantastical visions," Natalie explains in an exclusive interview for Phygital Mag.
Fashion is indeed an element that notably permeates her images. And her references are intense: "I love the work of designers like Alexander McQueen, Eiko Ishioka, Thierry Mugler, Rick Owens," she lists. Not bad at all.
The artist has been commissioned by designers, novelists, filmmakers, and musicians, as well as signing works in the editorial market - you will find Natalie's work on the covers of books like Cyanure by Camilla Lackberg, and La suit du Solstice by LJ Smith, for example.
Genesis
Natalie, multiskilled, produces works made with a remix of photography, computer graphics, elements in 3D, and AI. Her first work on the blockchain was Peccatum, in which the artist explores dark corners of the human psyche, through the Foundation platform.
Shau believes that digital art needed NFTs for a long time. "As a lot of galleries were overlooking digital art as something that doesn't have an 'original.' Like in painting, there are originals and there are copies or prints. And that affected the prices. Now a lot of galleries will have to reconsider their views about digital art, and have a more serious approach to it," she ponders.
Natalie Shau has works on Tezos, Ethereum, and Solana, with collectors mainly in the first two. "I prefer to use Ethereum for 1/1s. Solana is fairly new to me," says the artist who left her studies in economics and business college and doesn't regret it.
On future and ambiguity
I ask about the future. Natalie reflects: "Art for me is not some type of career path, creation and expressing myself is a way of life. Of course, I am lucky that I can call it my profession too, so I will just continue to better myself in my craft and explore different stories."
Some of her works present the feminine occasionally in paradoxical mode, for example, with fetish ballet women, hooded, carrying firearms: "All my work is about duality. Either it's fantasy art or photography. Because the world consists of beauty and ugliness, weakness and strength, life and death. I also love to make the past and the future meet each other in the present time," she explains.
Indeed, it is none other than Philippe Daverio, Italian art historian and critic, in his delightful "L'Arte di guardare l'arte" (The Art of Looking at Art), who finally teaches us: "The world of the arts is intimately ambiguous. In fact, only that which is ambiguous can be considered art." And Natalie Shau's entire body of work is certainly a work of art. A very good, ambiguous work of art.
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PHYGITAL MAG: ART | FASHION CULTURE | WEB3
