Winter 2021 featured artist, Bianca Nemelc, recently opened a new solo show, Terra Firma, at Ramp Gallery in London. The show, featuring her blend of landscape and bodies, create an abstraction, where the flesh blends with the tropical setting. For the show, Bianca wrote an essay, that we are sharing with you today.
The phrase ‘Terra Firma’ is defined as “the ground as distinct from sea and air” and this new body of work aims to investigate that distinction, blurring the lines between land, water and body. Questions arise during the creation of each work; what is the importance of rooting oneself to land physically or through ancestral lineage? How marginal is the difference between bodies of land, water and bones when each shares the same composition of basic elements? How can bridging the brown body to the land alter our relationship to place-politically and intimately? Each canvas envisions a chapter in the metamorphosis of physical body to the body as a figurative landscape starting from “Holding Up The Sun, So That I Can See The Sky” to the figure’s final form in “A Grassy Heaven”. In each painting she bends and camouflages into land, air and water, mimicking mountains and rocks, finding and redefining herself through each reinvention.
The female figure within my work exists without an individual identity, allowing her to transcend a single narrative and allows the viewer to hold her and see her as themselves; her shapes were created in my image but she exists as her own protagonist within the worlds I create. Natural elements within each painting are reminiscent of the flora from my ancestral homelands (Dominican Republic, Suriname, Indonesia, New York City) infused with the playfulness of my own imagination to create new worlds for the figure to exist. The repetitive process of layering paint and purposeful line-making to create solid surfaces are a meditation in itself and subtle gradients evoke the early work of brazilian artist Tarsila Do Amaral, who is a source of stylistic inspiration for me.
My desire through this body of work is to highlight the beauty and nuance that exists between the female body and the natural environment within both personal and political contexts; aiding in my own journey towards defining my connection to Terra Firma. —Bianca Nemelc
