Astra Zero (born Dustin Nicholls) is a queer Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist, designer, illustrator, creative director, and songwriter.
Born in Merritt, British Columbia, and raised in Faro, Yukon, Astra Zero developed an early interest in art through drawing and painting, guided in part by family influences and self-directed experimentation. As a teenager, he began working with early digital tools, combining scanned textures, found materials, photography, and hand-drawn elements, laying the foundation for a practice rooted in remixing, reinterpretation, and disruption of traditional processes.
Today, Astra Zero works fluidly across digital & traditional painting, 3D sculpting and rendering, animation, graphic design, photo and video editing, and music, often combining multiple mediums within a single piece. Rather than committing to a singular discipline, his practice is intentionally adaptive, allowing concept and provocation to dictate form.
Conceptually, his work challenges historical and contemporary ideas of acceptability in art, particularly around sexuality, gender, conformity and power. He is widely recognized for reimagining classical and historical artworks, many originally created to objectify women, he reinterprets them through queer, erotic, and sexualized male-centered perspectives. These revisions function both as critique and reclamation, questioning whose minds & bodies have been permitted visibility, desire, and permanence within art history.
Across collections and art styles, Astra Zero incorporates crude, vulgar, spooky, and deliberately inappropriate elements, using discomfort & ignorance as a method of inquiry rather than shock alone. His work unapologetically reclaims queer and erotic imagery that has been censored, erased, or marginalized, positioning it as a legitimate and necessary continuation of visual culture.
In addition to his visual practice, Astra Zero has published multiple art books and maintains an active music catalog, releasing singles and EPs that extend his thematic interests into sound. Whether working in static or time-based media, his work exists at the intersection of fine art, digital experimentation, queer subculture, and cultural revisionism.
you can see more of his work on Instagram @astrazero and in the portfolio section of this website
