Alisha Hacadurian & The Artful Craft of Studio Demiurge

Interview by Leah Morris.

In the age of intelligence, craft is cut-through.

With so many creative tools at our fingertips, the internet is flooded with images. And in the trope-filled beauty and skincare categories, it can be especially hard to cut through. So, when my thumb was halted mid-scroll by a beautifully inspired piece of work for Melbourne-based handbag label Sans Beast, I had to track down the talent behind it and share her work with our community. 

Introducing Alisha Hacadurian, who founded Demiurge Studio in 2018 creating still-life photography and creative direction for beauty, skincare and design-led brands. Her work spans Australia and the US, and her portfolio includes brands stocked at Mecca, Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom and Credo Beauty. As well as GINGER&me, INSKIN CO, Sans Beast, Theadore & Co, Status Anxiety, Black Blaze, Tulita, iota Body and DRMTLGY among many more. 

Hacadurian’s work has also been selected for inclusion in the beautiful coffee table series ‘Packaged for Life No. 3: Scent’ published by Victionary. 

Read on to discover her craft and view the work. And if you’re not jumping up and down to work with Demiurge Studio by the end of this story, I’ll eat my words. 

Art Direction, Styling & Photography by @demiurge.studio.

LM: What’s your creative background and how did Demiurge come about? 

AH: My background isn't a straight line. I did art and photography throughout high school and always had a strong instinct toward the visual, but after leaving school I spent years in corporate administrative roles at companies like Boeing, Ernst & Young and Channel 7. They were good organisations but the wrong fit, and eventually that gap between where I was and what I actually wanted to be doing became impossible to ignore.

I retrained formally, completing a Diploma in Graphic Design at TAFE NSW, and started a creative studio that went through several iterations before landing on what it is now. The graphic design foundation mattered, it gave me a language for how imagery functions within a brand, not just how it looks in isolation. Over time my work evolved progressively toward photography and art direction, and I kept stripping things back until I arrived at still life.

Still life turned out to be where everything converged. The design thinking, the instinct for objects, the need for complete creative control. It's a form that rewards slowness, that finds tension in ordinary objects, that lives somewhere between fine art and commercial work.

LM: ‘Demiurge Studio’ is such a memorable name! What inspired it? 

AH: The word itself drew me in. Demiurge comes from the ancient Greek dēmiourgós, meaning craftsman or skilled worker and in its broader sense refers to a driving, unstoppable creative force. That felt like an accurate description of both the work and the intention behind it. A single creative force, building something from nothing.

LM: What’s your take on AI as a creative tool – do you use it and if so, how? 

AH: I don't use AI to generate images and I never will. My concern isn't with technology broadly. It's what gets lost when a brand replaces commissioned photography with AI-generated imagery, the human authorship, the considered decisions, the physical making of a thing. There's a realness to an image that has been styled, lit and shot by an actual person that I don't think can be replicated, and I think audiences are starting to feel that even when they can't articulate it.

The replication issue is where it becomes personal. I've had my own images used to train or inform AI outputs. Work I made, replicated without credit, without consent and without compensation. I've watched it happen to other creatives too. Drawing inspiration from another artist's work is part of how creativity has always functioned, however a direct copy is something else entirely.

Where I draw a distinction is in post-production tools that assist rather than becoming the author. The image itself, the concept, the styling, the light, that will always be made by me.

LM: Tell us about a recent piece of work you’re proud of. 

AH: The Sans Beast commission stands out for me, and not just because the work was well received. It's the project where the creative framework felt most fully realised.

Sans Beast is a vegan accessories brand celebrating its ninth birthday and Cathryn, the founder, came with a level of trust and creative generosity that's rare. The bags themselves are beautifully made, the texture, the construction, the detail and that gave the work somewhere real to start from. When a product has that kind of integrity, the creative direction almost writes itself.

The brief gave me room, and what emerged was a creative direction I'd describe as charged stillness. I drew on Dutch Golden Age painting, Caravaggio, film noir – not as aesthetic references but as structural ones. Those painters weren't interested in objects as objects. They were interested in objects as carriers of time, human presence, and quiet drama.

Every image places the bag inside a world that already existed before it arrived. Preserved fruits, handwritten letters, vintage sewing tools, a stained coffee cup, an 1836 cotton spool. These aren't props arranged around a product, they’re evidence of a life being lived, and the bag has simply entered it. The product is always the hero. But here, it's a hero with a history given meaning by the world it inhabits rather than simply presented within it.

The Aesop personal work I made around the same time came from a similar instinct. The same bottle across five images, each time placed among objects that had no business being near a luxury fragrance. Vintage headphones, copper pipe fittings, a billiard ball. No brief, no client. Just the same question: what happens when something considered is placed inside something ordinary?

Art Direction, Styling & Photography by @demiurge.studio.

LM: What are you listening to, reading or watching right now that you love, and why? 

AH: Music is always on when I'm working whether it be styling, shooting, editing. Lately I've been drawn to my instrumental playlist. There's something that feels right about making images in silence that isn't quite silence.

I've also just bought How to Live an Artful Life by Katy Hessel. The title initially drew me in. I'm the kind of creative who moves through the world constantly thinking about what I could make with what I'm seeing. A texture, an object, a quality of light. It never really switches off. I wanted a book that understood that impulse and gave it somewhere to go.

LM: Who would you swap shoes with for a day and why? 

I'd want a day following Lauren Bamford and Stephanie Stamatis. Ideally together, because they often collaborate and what they make together is magic. Lauren is one of my favourite photographers and Stephanie as an art director and set designer who operates at a level I find genuinely inspiring. A day inside how either of them sees and thinks and makes decisions would be worth more than any masterclass.

LM: How can our community work with you? 

AH: I work directly with brands and in collaboration with agencies. The studio maintains an extensive private prop library curated over several years and sourced from high-end brands through to vintage finds. A core part of the full-service model and a direct expression of the aesthetic that runs through the work. 

To start a conversation: hello@demiurgestudio.com

Work: demiurgestudio.com and @demiurge.studio on Instagram.

Portrait of Alisha Hacadurian by Phoebe Hebden at The May Studio.