Mydollmallu tears, crumples and folds paper into another world – then wears it

Somewhere outside St. Petersburg, in a country house surrounded by forest and nature reserves, Alla wakes up and immediately starts making. The ideas came in the night – they always do. "A storm of thoughts begins when I go to bed," she says. "These are unique hours when one idea replaces another. I see thoughts visually, as if I could touch and feel them. And if my heart is beating fast, I ask myself, 'What if?' And when I wake up, I start to act."

The results of all this nocturnal thinking are, to put it simply, extraordinary. Alla – who works under the name Mydollmallu – makes paper costumes, theatrical sets and wearable sculptures entirely by hand, then photographs herself wearing them. A sweeping green gown with a ruffled train, its surface rippling like a tidal wave in motion. A giant paper boat, constructed from previous projects, was sailed from her own garden. A playing-card figure, chequered and ceremonial, set against a hand-painted backdrop. Each image is staged like a still from a film that's set in an alternative universe.

Alla grew up in central St. Petersburg, in an apartment with tall windows, a stucco ceiling and the sound of trams outside. Museums, rivers and canals were part of the daily geography. "My mother says I always loved drawing, and from an early age I dreamed of becoming an artist, or more accurately, a fashion designer." Her first degree was in women's technical design, which, as she notes, makes her "quite handy with paper". Her second was from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design. For years, she worked in fashion and taught in the field. Then, in 2019, she and her family moved to the countryside, and her first forays into paper truly kicked off.

"Nature outside the window, parks and nature reserves near our home – we have beautiful nature! – Inspiration is boundless. All of this has influenced my creative path over the years. I was tired of the noisy city and the constant rush," she explains. "Here, I feel more freedom and more self-expression. I have a home studio, and when I wake up, I can immediately begin working on ideas that came to me in my sleep. It's wonderful!

Once these ideas arrive in her mind in the morning, the rest of her process is pretty intuitive. "I consider myself an improvisational paper artist," she says. "My ideas are a self-portrait. With each new project, I embark on an experiment with myself and paper." She tears, crumples, folds, and builds, using her hands to express "strength or fragility" and colour to signal a shift in mood. She invokes Kandinsky, who heard colours musically. Alla, on the other hand, feels paper emotionally, working until the image in her head becomes something she can stand inside. The journey from idea to finished image is, she says, "pure euphoria".

The boat piece is marked as her favourite, a spontaneous improvisation that repurposes objects from previous projects into a new scene, which she describes as "a collaboration with myself". She says, only half joking, that if she were ever invited to accept an Oscar, she would only go in that costume. Then a paper flower is another favourite, made in spring and all about blooming on one's own terms. "I want to 'grow' with a sense of freedom – without store-bought fertilisers, without feature forecasts or predictions. Don't tear me, I'm all in bloom."

As for future plans, Alla is predictably resistant to pinning it down. "The world is moving and changing so quickly that there's no point in making predictions," she says. Though she does dream of international collaborations, including with Hungarian photographer Szilveszter Makó, she plans to keep discovering the world around her. "Why is the earth round?" she asks, with a winking-smile emoji. It is, in some ways, exactly the right question for an artist who builds whole worlds from a single sheet of paper.