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Two contemporary artists – Iranian Azadeh Ghotbi and Turkish Cypriot jewellery-maker and sculptress Aida Bergsen – have combined their artistry to showcase the inherent beauty and wonder of nature’s cycle of life.
The exhibition titled Living - Fading represents the artists' perceptions of aesthetic elements from nature. Each uses different methods and mediums to magnify nature’s mundane beauty: whilst Ghotbi plays the role of the observer, Bergsen gets inspired and imitates.
Taking her cue from the Japanese concept of Mono No Aware (‘the pathos of things’), Ghotbi’s photography glorifies the extraordinary beauty of our natural surroundings and their final stages of life, which are usually overlooked. Her images of visually striking decaying leaves invite the viewer to observe one’s surrounding more keenly and empathetically, and to rejoice in the process of discovery.
Plato believed the physical world of Nature was a poor, decaying copy of a perfect and eternal other world. Similarly, Bergsen recreates and immortalises mythological-like natural compositions. Her sculpted flowers, plants and stones are captured at their most beautiful. Yet this ideal illusory representation is at odds with nature's real essence, which condemns all her creations to change and eventually fade away.
Plato believed the physical world of Nature was a poor, decaying copy of a perfect and eternal other world. Similarly, Bergsen recreates and immortalises mythological-like natural compositions. Her sculpted flowers, plants and stones are captured at their most beautiful. Yet this ideal illusory representation is at odds with nature's real essence, which condemns all her creations to change and eventually fade away.
