Nathalia Edenmont
November 27, 2003 - February 10, 2004
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Press Release
Wetterling Gallery is proud to present a new series of photographs by Nathalia Edenmont. The body of work consists of portraits of animals placidly sitting in hand-blown vases and other sumptuous containers. Rabbits and other animals appear wearing splendid collars and seem aristocratic, almost royal.
But at the same time we are faced with questions: Are they really alive? What makes them so docile? The camera confronts the viewer with a moment frozen in time that suspends the borders between life and death. The image and the technologies of image making challenges and transgresses social conventions and taboos.
Edenmont’s photographs reference, both in style and subject matter that of many great painters. The collars around the animals’ necks suggest connotations to those seen in 17th century paintings by Dutch masters. But just as clearly as they are connected to the calmness and domesticity of portraiture and still life painting, they owe as much to the macabre and violent in the late Goya.
There is a notion that there is something “not right” in the pictures: a drop of blood on the little animal, the distorted expressions and similar details all give the photos an eerie aspect. Edenmont’s choice of “material” makes one think of the abject dealt with by artists such as Andres Serrano, Mike Kelly, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith...
Edenmont was brought up in the former Soviet Union. She moved to Sweden twelve years ago. Having one foot in both cultures and belonging to neither gives her a remarkably sharp eye for the cultural differences and moral paradoxes of both.