WG.109

Wetterling Gallery proudly presents a retrospective exhibition by Nathalia Edenmont. Piece of Me is curated around the many self-portraits she continuously has created over the past two decades. Opening Reception will take place Thursday, May 27 from 5 - 8 PM. 

Nathalia Edenmont's art is deeply personal and exceptionally brave. Through her own dramatic life story, she explores the great questions of life. In the exhibition, we get to follow the artist through her life's different events and traumas: miscarriages, infertility, death and fear. In the portrayal of herself as a child, she uses a muse with undeniable similarities to Edenmont's own features. With art historical references, Edenmont also takes on the role of the Madonna, the mother, and a queen. Her expression is steadfastly consistent with a palpable stillness. The motifs seam to float in a timeless vacuum.

“I only look inside my head. What I see in my mind is what I create. I do not sketch; the image is complete and sharp within me”.

Edenmonts portraits are straightforward, posing against a pitch-black background. Her details are riveting and sharply focused. The props are carefully arranged and full of symbols; flowers, collars, blood, fruits, animals, spiders etc. But she works intuitively, and the symbols cannot be translated into any general confirmed terms. What you see in the image has been built with actual elements, there is no Photoshop editing or other manipulation. Edenmont works with an analogue large format Sinar 8x10 camera, every work is captured in one single session.

In Nathalia Edenmont's imagery, beauty is constantly accompanied by the grotesque. Her photographs are immediately accessible and arouse emotions, create discussions, and leave few untouched.

Nathalia Edenmont was born in Yalta in the Soviet Union in 1970. Since 1991 she has been based in Stockholm, Sweden. She attended art school in Kiev and then in Simferopol in the Ukraine prior to entering Forsbergs International School of Design in Stockholm. Nathalia Edenmont has had solo exhibitions all over the world including Flint Institute of Arts, MI, USA, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden, Sven-Harrys konstmuseum in Stockholm, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, NY, USA, Guy Pieters Gallery, Knokke, Belgium, WhiteSpace, West Palm Beach, Florida, and the Institut suédois in Paris among others. She is represented in numerous private and public collections including Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Miami Art Museum, and the Moscow House of Photography Museum.