UNDRGRND ARTIST: ASTRA DE LA CRÉME
JULY 22ND, 2022
Each week artists are commissioned for a piece of art through the UNDRGRND Grant Program. 100 NFTs are minted and are randomly airdropped to UNDRGRND Membership Cardholders. To find out how you can be featured as an UNDRGRND Artist check out our Discord.
Exploring the past to gain perspective on the present. Plenty of cliches remind us of the importance of learning from the past not repeating it. Astra uses her art to explore both the cultural past and how it reflects our current society; but, also explores her personal history through her self-portraits in an attempt become a truer form of herself.
Not just in her art, but also in the environment she publishes and showcases her work. Drawn to the hopes of wealth/resource redistribution, accessibility, and cooperation rather than competition, cryptocurrency, and NFTs, have rejuvenated her creativity with the promise of bringing true societal change. After a year-long creative block, Astra has found a supportive home in the renaissance of art that NFTs have brought. Like the belief in the limitless possibilities that the technology of crypto can bring, so are the limitless possibilities of creation happening in Astra’s art. If artists are comfortable and able to shed the fear of rejection, then they can express and create with unbound honesty.
That acceptance provides a safe environment for Astra to explain each piece of art she creates. While some artists feel that their work can stand alone and be interpreted however the audience may see it, Astra gives long descriptions of each newly minted NFT giving all who cannot know her personally a glimpse of her deep, soulful humanity. In Der Struwwelpeter (Cry Baby series) Astra uses a Germanic story to open up about her mourning the loss of a relationship, “This painting is inspired by the drawing Baba Yaga by the Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin. In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is an ogress who steals, cooks, and eats her victims, usually children.”
“The image depicts me scaring my former partner away. He is seen as very tiny in there, almost insignificant or at least I was wishing he was at the time. The painting called Der Struwwelpeter comes from the title of a famous German children's book by Heinrich Hoffmann. “
“My former partner was Austrian, and consequently, I was very inspired by Germanic stories, especially in the realm of children's books as sadly, we had the emotional intelligence of a toddler back when we were dating.”
“So, the story of Der Struwwelpeter describes a boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular. He appears in this drawing barefoot, as he often liked to be.”
“This drawing was an attempt to heal from this pain that I was dragging along for nearly a year. In the image, I am naked and vulnerable rooted on the ground.”
“With him, I had for the first time, the true desire of finally settling down, and the result of my certainty in what I felt for him was met with him running for his life.”
When you speak with Astra, even through text, there is a sense of ease and familiarity. She is comfortable in her skin, light and genuine. This all can be attributed to her self-reflection and processing, publicly, of deeply personal emotions and ideas in her art. She has become impervious to judgment by looking through her past to understand her present and welcomes us all to witness her experience and her insight.
