WG.115, Nathalia Edenmont, Eternal Seduction

About

Nathalia Edenmont’s work centers around a fascination for beauty and the thin line between life and death. Nature is an important source of inspiration, both as a starting point for her artistic process as well as a source of working materials. In Eternal Seduction Edenmont presents a new series of photographic images where the originals are collages created from thousands of meticulously assembled butterfly wings.

"It takes me three years to finish this collage and I can finally shoot it with my analogue large format camera. The final photo is so magnetized every structure of the butterfly wing is visible – it feels like I’m getting close to the butterfly’s soul. By mirroring the photo in two identical images, the merge in the middle becomes magic - a new creature is awakened. I have created a powerful beast."

- Nathalia Edenmont, 2022 

Nathalia uses an analog large-format Sinar camera to get the highest possible image quality, which allows her to enlarge the image hundreds of times. The result is an abstract work with painterly qualities. By multiplying and then mirroring these photos against each other, Edenmont finds new complex motifs within her own imagery. The abstract works are reminiscent of kaleidoscopes and Tibetan mandalas. The artworks also have references to the butterfly's symbolic significance for rebirth and reincarnation, where Edenmont allows new abstract creatures to emerge. As an extension of the exhibition, Eternal Seduction is accompanied by a publication featuring two essays by writers and art critics James Putnam and Jean Wainwright.

Born in Yalta, Crimea, 1970, Edenmont trained at State Art School of Kiev, Soviet Union, Simferopol State Art School, Crimea, and Forsberg’s International School of Design, Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States and can be found in private and public collections globally including the Modern Museum Stockholm, Miami Art Museum and Moscow House of Photography Museum among others. In February 2014, Swedish public television broadcast a one hour documentary about Edenmont and her work. Edenmont lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.