Synkroniciti is excited to welcome visual artist Nasta Martyn, based in Poland, with three analog paper collages and an ink drawing on the theme of Expectations, as well as an article on her inspiration and process, “Expectations of Enchantment: Story and Vision in the Artwork of Nasta Martyn.”
I take my heart, I don’t cry anymore, and scarlet mask form a triad of fairytale‑inflected visions rendered in paper and ink. Each piece opens a door into Nasta’s interior world, where strange anatomy, foliage, and spirit-beings inhabit a charged symbolic space.
- In I take my heart, hands entwine with a structure that suggests both ribcage and tree — a hybrid of vulnerability and rootedness.
- I don’t cry anymore places a feminine figure among ghostly presences who swim beneath her, creating an enigmatic tableau of guardianship and spectral memory.
- In scarlet mask, a red mask hovers above a winged face, perhaps signaling a confrontation between identity and metamorphosis.
Across these works, the bold palette is unmistakable: red and white, sharpened by touches of green or flesh tone. Flowers sprout eyes; foliage becomes sentient. Martyn’s imagery invites viewers to enter a realm where beasts and beauties are not opposites but companions — manifestations of expectation, longing, and the courage to see differently.
The ink sketch, old masks discarded, is more earthly–two masks lie together in a field of red flowers, while a bird with a human face presides over the scene, trees in the background. It feels like carnage, like a death scene for discarded personae.
View Nasta’s intriguing artwork and read about her process in Synkroniciti’s Expectations, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Nasta Martyn is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator, poet and writer. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art and also has a bachelor’s degree in design. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in art history.
Her first personal exhibition My soul is like a wild hawk (2002) was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich in Minsk. Her first series was The Red Book, dedicated to rare and endangered species of animals. Ecology is a main theme in her work, which also includes fairy tales, short stories, and poems.
In 2020, she took part in Poznań Art Week. In 2022, she participated in international exhibitions in China, Taiwan, and the United States. In 2024, she received the Jury’s Special Prize for her poster in China.