Emma Talbot

In colourful compositions, Emma Talbot imagines future scenarios in which spirituality
and science converge, and people live more holistically with their environment. Her work contains urgent messages about climate, feminism, and the appreciation of elderly women. In her large-scale works, Talbot often incorporates speech bubbles, in which mysterious slogans alternate with empowering words. The texts in her work encourage transcending
a dualistic view of nature and seeing the interconnectedness of things – elements, plants, animals – as a strategy for surviving the ecological catastrophe. At the same time, there are often intimate, contemplative thoughts in which Talbot reflects on and contemplates life. The speech balloons are accompanied by faceless figures – allowing everyone to identify with them – floating among colourful lines in a dreamlike landscape.

Cycle, Portal, Path features the panel Datura, which refers to a toxic plant that, among other things, causes high blood pressure, hallucinations, and hypothermia and ‘is used to make flying ointment for witches.’ The work is part of a larger series called 21st Century Herbal. The series consists of fourteen silk panels that together form an Herbal, a mediaeval manuscript describing plants and their properties. With her contemporary interpretation of an Herbal, Talbot aims to emphasise the magical and medicinal powers of plants. Talbot’s study of plants is reminiscent of how af Klint studied and described plants in her notebooks, linking human emotions to both the vegetal world and the spiritual world.

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Cycle, Portal, Path

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This fall, Nest presents Cycle, Portal, Path: an exhibition that examines how the traces left by the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) affect contemporary art 100 years later. Af Klint lived in a time full of developments and scientific turmoil. Scientists studied nature and dealt with phenomena such as atomic fission and X-rays; discoveries that shaped the world and made the invisible visible.

Cycle, Portal, Path shows that Af Klint’s exploration of the relationship between science, nature and spiritual life is as urgent now as it was in her time. The artists in the exhibition relate directly or indirectly to Af Klint and her views and supplement them with contemporary or futuristic ideas. Through meditative drawings and video installations, abstract paintings and AI-generated images, the artists reflect on new technologies, spiritual movements, ecology and the connection between then, now and future generations.

Cycle, Portal, Path was created in conversation with Kunstmuseum Den Haag and KM21, where the exhibitions Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondriaan: Forms of Life and Tai Shani – Our Hieromantic Objects of Love will be on view simultaneously. A diverse context program has been developed for the three exhibitions. Keep an eye on our website for updates.

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