Natasha Kertes
b. 1972
Klin, Russia
Natasha Kertes is a Russian contemporary artist whose work explores beauty, mythology, identity, and transformation through photography, installation, and new media. Drawing from fashion, folklore, popular culture, and personal experience, Kertes creates visually compelling works that balance sensuality, symbolism, and imagination. The artist lives and works in the United States.
Featured Works
Frog Princess, from the series Russland Slavic Chants
photographic print on archival paper | 4 of 11 + 2 AP
40 x 60 in
Natasha Kertes
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Black Panther
photographic print on archival paper, under acrylic
framed, black frame with red trim
from fashion photo shoot of Yulia Klass for Agent Provacateur, live panther | edition 2/11 + 2 AP
47 x 37 in
Natasha Kertes
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Anna
photographic print on art linen canvas, varnished and stretched over inner wood frame interior
edition 3/11 + 2 AP
Natasha Kertes
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Chinoiserie
photographic print on archival paper, in red Baccarat acrylic shadow box | edition 1/11 + 2 AP
20 x 30 in
Natasha Kertes
contact for pricing
Natasha Kertes
Natasha Kertes works at the intersection of fine art photography, fashion, performance, and installation. Known for her carefully constructed images, she creates elaborate visual worlds in which the human figure is transformed through costume, gesture, landscape, and light. Her photographs are lush and seductive, but rarely straightforward. Beauty becomes a form of theatre, and the women she depicts appear less as conventional portrait subjects than as goddesses, saints, heroines, and figures drawn from folklore or an imagined mythology.
Kertes brings the precision of an art director to every composition. Clothing, animals, objects, color, and setting are chosen for their visual and symbolic force, producing images that feel at once contemporary and outside of time. Works such as Black Panther, Frog Princess, Saint Sebastian, and the Mardin Series reveal her ability to move fluidly between fashion imagery, religious iconography, fairy tale, and cinematic fantasy. The resulting photographs are unapologetically sensual, yet their beauty is complicated by vulnerability, power, danger, and transformation.
Her practice also extends beyond portraiture. In Ice Project, created in the Wadi Rum desert of Jordan, Kertes placed monumental blocks of ice against the ancient, arid landscape and photographed their gradual disappearance. The contrast between frozen matter and desert heat became a striking meditation on beauty, impermanence, and the passage of time. Elsewhere, she incorporates sculptural framing, acrylic, canvas, and layered surfaces, treating presentation as an extension of the artwork itself.
Whether working with a lone figure in a dense landscape, a model posed with a live panther, or ice melting beneath a desert sun, Kertes creates images with immediate visual impact and a lingering sense of mystery. Her work draws viewers into worlds where fashion, folklore, devotion, desire, and the natural environment continually overlap.
Kertes has exhibited internationally at venues and fairs including Art Basel Miami, SCOPE Miami Beach, Art Miami/CONTEXT, Art Monaco, and the Carrousel du Louvre. The artist lives and works in the United States.
Selected Works
A Selection of Projects
Porcelain: Portraits of Modern Antiquity (Wynwood, Miami)
A stunning fusion of classical aesthetics and contemporary styling, this solo show was recognized as one of Miami’s top ten art exhibitions of the year. Natasha presented Renaissance-inspired portraits with surreal twists, including a Venus-like sculpture with corset-like elements.
Fantastico Ergo Sum – I Dream, Therefore I Am (Miami)
A deeply sensual solo exhibition where Natasha explored inner mythologies and feminine identity through light, shadow, and symbol-laden portraiture. It juxtaposed raw emotion with refined technical mastery.
Mesopotamia Self‑Portrait Series (Mardin, Turkey)
Captured on a location shoot in remote Mesopotamia, these self‑portraits were featured in Art Basel’s Irreversible Magazine and exhibited at Gallery Carousel Studios/Miami during Art Basel week. The images are haunting, nomadic, and steeped in ancient mystery.
Ice Project (Wadi Rum, Jordan)
A feat of imagination and endurance. In the stupendous silence of the desert, she staged massive blocks of ice, in the fiery sands to document their slow, surreal melt against the stark landscape, a poetic meditation on time, memory, and transformation. The resulting images are stark and cinematic, where frozen matter and ancient terrain merge into a visual story both elemental and profound.