Home

As with many of Anja Niemi’s projects, the artist herself appears in A Naturalist Guide to Magic – self-cast as the lone actress in a typically enigmatic role. This time, though, Niemi’s character is by no means the leading lady; there’s a sense instead that nature is the project’s protagonist, its living landscapes and sentient spirit overwhelming her presence more than ever before.

Whilst the characters that Niemi designs and embodies often follow a trajectory of transformation, the arc of this latest role closely echoes the artist’s own reality. Having bought a horse a few years back, Niemi soon encountered a problem of connection. Her pre-conceived visions of the relationship they’d share fell drastically short, leading her down a winding path of soul-searching. In trying to become attuned to her horse’s needs, to communicate with him somehow – as well as to better understand the energy she emanates – Niemi sought knowledge from a wide range of sources. The process gave her new appreciation for the natural world, with the endeavor to communicate with non-human life forms opening countless new doors.

As was essential to Niemi’s recent journey, the images in A Naturalist Guide to Magic demand that viewers become conscious of nature’s subtlety. In inky monochrome, these images emit a slow organic quality – distinct from the meticulous tableaux that make up Niemi’s previous series. With less pressure on each image to communicate an idea or precise narrative, the visual sum is characteristically open-ended, its quiet poetry ushering in our own fantasies and projections. Whose wishes takes precedence in a world where human control is the status quo – and where our fingerprints leave indelible traces on the landscapes we inhabit? And if we can learn to talk to an animal, what’s to be learnt from a meadow, a river, a tree or a stone?