During her residency at D6 in Newcaslte, UK, Dasha explored the lost landscapes of Newcastle as a result of the city’s transformation, particularly its industrial landscapes, abandoned spaces and their functionality, as well as working with memories and how they shape the spaces. She investigated the city’s hidden and unused infrastructure and its alternative usage to comprehend their potential impact on people’s behaviour and perception. 

During the Grounding residency, she developed the project Lost Scapes with the composer Alexey Shmurak. As a result of the Russian invasion, Ukriane has lost kilometers of beaches – the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas, partly the Dnipro, the Southern Bug, the Siverskyi Donets, the Kinburn Spit, even the beaches of Odesa. And this is not only a physical loss of public space, it is also a loss of the habit of relaxing and resting where it feels safe to do so. This process has a rather strange and slightly fun twin: since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sandbags have appeared in large cities to protect monuments and buildings from the effects of bombing. These sandbags were a temporary fix; obviously, no one thought the war would last for years. Under the influence of the sun and wind, the bags lose their shape and crumble; the sand forms an ironic analogue of the beach in places that are not beach-like in form and substance, such as squares and side walks. Thus, the beach and the sand are transformed and migrated.

Born in Kyiv, Dasha graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy before further study in  academic drawing, design and painting at Oleksandr Titov’s workshop, Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London summer school, Peter Bankov’s Poster School and the Canactions School of Urban Planning. She received the  Gold Medal Award at the Warsaw Poster Biennale for the work ‘Harvest’. She is co-founder of the SERIA__ project, dedicated to Ukrainian brutalists mass housing (so-called Panelka) and is a tutor at Kharkiv School of Architecture. 

More information:
dashapodoltseva.com

Images: portrait of Dasha | Dasha Podoltseva, Lost Scapes, 2023