About

 

ARTIST STATEMENT
Anchored in a deep connection to the landscape and fascination with the photo-based object, my work investigates how observing Nature informs contemplation, perception, and identity.

Using light, wet plate collodion chemistry, paper cut-outs, cliché verre, and brushes, I create experimental camera-less compositions in the darkroom through multiple exposures that allude to landscapes, light and atmospheric phenomena, and organic forms found in nature. Rather than transcribing the observed landscape, I seek to record intuitive responses that speak to the felt and ineffable experiences of being fully present in the landscape–to a sense of wonder, awe, and permeating immanence, while simultaneously meditating on loss, hope, and meaning.

Straddling the line between representation and abstraction, the pared down visual vocabulary arises from the immediacy of the photogram as I explore the boundaries of the photographic medium, placing it in conversation with painting, collage, graphic arts, and sculpture. The compositions, ranging in mood from contemplative stillness to dynamism and movement, employ shape, artifact, gesture, and tonal range to explore balance and rhythm. 

ELEMEMENTAL FORMS: LANDSCAPE
The abstract landscape series, Elemental Forms: Landscape emerged as the artist’s direct response to her surroundings and to feeling a sense of well-being and security within the landscape. She believes that each locale has its specific identity, history, and emotional imprint. Her aim with this series is to record intangible aspects of the landscape, as she experiences them through immersion and observation. The photogram as a medium allows the artist to search for the essence of the place by using simplicity and abstraction. By reinterpreting a 19th century process and reducing photography to its essential components, the artist has created a unique visual vocabulary suggestive of landscapes that exist outside of space and time.

BIO
Born in 1978 (former Yugoslavia), Nadezda Nikolova is a photographic artist. Her work is in the collections of Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK), SAMoCA Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art (Riyadh, SA), Monterey Museum of Art (Monterey, California), and Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana), has been featured in The Washington Post, British Journal of Photography, and Black & White Photography Magazine, among others, and is exhibited and collected internationally. She represented by HackelBury Fine Art in London and Esther Woerdehoff Gallery in Paris.