Helene Schmitz

"In February 2010, I made a journey to Surinam in South America. I traveled in the footsteps of Daniel Rolander, a neglected and forgotten Linnaean apostle. As a part of the project I visited a butterfly farm in the jungle. A man with Dutch origin ran the farm. The man's attempts to curb a seemingly insatiable nature, obviously beyond all control, captured my interest." - Helene Schmitz

A whole section of Western art and literature attributes a “kind innocence” to nature. Far from the idyllic vision of Paradise Lost, Helene Schmitz focuses on the more obscure side of nature, on its insatiable, menacing, aspects, and the representations we make of it, the projections we associate with it.

The series Sunken Gardens deals with something lost: rare traces evoking human presence are dominated, and almost on the edge of being absorbed, by a Nature out of control. The artist questions these fascinating spaces where nature and culture meet and overlap. She takes us to secret, captivating universes, awakening mixed feelings of both attraction and anxiety.