Unezhit Dushu: new Russian visual culture
A Russian-language channel on contemporary Russian art and design: illustration, posters, mosaics, type, objects and interiors that rework familiar local aesthetics.
What it is
Unezhit Dushu (roughly "to soften the soul") is a Telegram channel about contemporary Russian art and design. Its bio reads "Rus, beauty and rock'n'roll", followed by tags that show the range: digital art, illustration, type, object design, clothing, interiors, print, painting, branding and architecture. When we checked, it had around 50,000 subscribers. Captions are in Russian; the art needs no translation.
Why we picked it
The channel collects work in which today's artists rethink Russian and Soviet aesthetics — without kitsch and without pomp. It's a good way into a scene that rarely reaches big international design media.
Recent posts included a brand-new bus stop in Luchegorsk with a mosaic made for a local festival — so faithful to the Soviet mosaic tradition that the author first took it for a restoration. There were illustrations by Evgenia Abramova for a book by Dmitry Travin about the "seventies generation", warm autumn pieces by Katya Chizhma, and a note on Kroshevo, a cabbage-fermenting festival in the town of Borovichi.
The author makes things too: decorative posters of jars of pickles and fruit compote, and the results of a poster open call he ran for subscribers. That makes the feed feel less like an aggregator and more like a small community around one person.
You'll occasionally see a partner mention, but the core is artists' and designers' work.
Where to start
- Scroll and open anything that catches your eye — artists are usually credited, so you can follow them further.
- Try the hashtags from the bio, such as illustration or Russian type.
- Look for the Luchegorsk mosaic bus stop post.
- Find the poster open-call results for lots of different artists at once.
Who it's for
Illustrators and designers looking for references and new names, anyone curious what Russian visual culture looks like today beyond souvenir folk patterns, and people who like discovering artists to follow. A browser translator handles the short captions well.
Quick answers
Is this folk art? Not really. It's mostly contemporary artists working with Russian and Soviet motifs in new ways.
Are artists credited? In the posts we saw, yes — artists and projects are named.
