BODIES IN SILENCE by HELENE SCHMITZ

We are thrilled to welcome you to a new exhibition at IVAR - Tändstickspalatset in Stockholm, from November 14th until January 19th organized by WILLAS contemporary.

Surinam, Namibia, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Alabama. The acknowledged photographer artist Helene Schmitz has travelled across the globe with her large, wooden, analogue camera for the past decade.

Helene Schmitz’s work is a photographic account of the indelible mark left by the abusive relationship between humans and nature. Schmitz links her sober and revealing photographs to the rich tradition of landscape painting, using a large-format, analogue camera that enables the viewer to study both the overall vista and the small details. At first glance Schmitz’s works are silent and majestic accounts, hiding more than they reveal. Upon further investigation, the eerie silence piques our instincts telling us there is more than that which meets the eye.

Schmitz’s work focuses on sites where the view of separating human life from its natural surroundings is most tenuous. This investigation has brought her from still life to landscape photography; from Suriname in South America to the deserts of Namibia in Africa. The photographs meditate on the history of colonization over territories, people and resources.

Her images represent conflicts where the anthropocentric perspective is challenged by botanical and geological oppositional forces. Many of Schmitz’s images have this in common, the quiet vibrations of energy, ready to shatter equilibrium at a moment’s notice.

Helene Schmitz was born in 1960 in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied at Stockholm University and has a BA in Film and Art History. She has had numerous solo shows in Sweden and abroad. Schmitz has also produced several award-winning books where she has collaborated with writers, philosophers and historians of ideas.