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NINA LAMIEL BRUCHHAUS
WOVEN WITHIN
10/06/–15/07/2023

About my way of working

I understand art as a researching activity, which is composed of two things: me, as a perceiving, experiencing and feeling creature with the senses on the one hand and the painterly practice on the other. I practice painting in the sense of “thinking through making”. I want to explore all that is possible and impossible on the playground of the canvas. The starting point is the transgenerational traumatization in my family of origin. References to feminism and gender studies, history and sociology develop from this all by themselves.
My strong affinity to nature leads me to a preoccupation with nature mythology, as found for example in the Japanese Shinto religion. Inspired by this I develop poetic-metaphorical motifs.
The inherent materiality of painting represents a contrast to digitalization. The painterly vocabulary helps me express what I lack the words to talk about.

Through its slowness, painting is currently highly political and forms a contrast to the fast pace of our late capitalist society. Through its uniqueness it is valuable and can be experienced physically. It speaks to the whole body and can only be fully grasped and experienced in direct encounter. I have therefore chosen this medium because, in my opinion, it represents the greatest antithesis to the digital world and has in itself a great expressive power. Added to this is the passion for color and the urge to explore the seemingly infinite possibilities on canvas.

In terms of content, the overarching themes of sustainability, spirituality and feminism play the main role in my work. I see these thematic blocks as interrelated. All of my works are about moving away from excessive rationality and the dualistic thinking of Western modernity. An attitude that turns more to intuition and the romanticism of nature is important to me. I reject the hierarchy of body, mind or spirit. I follow a holistic approach in which physicality and sensuality play a major role. Femininity is not seen as weakness, but as strength. Vulnerability, tenderness, poetry as possibilities for renewal and progress towards a more just, sustainable world for all living beings.

The utopian potential of my work lies in its turn to the earthly. According to Bruno Latour, a new grounding can return humans to their natural origins. Perhaps the only way to ensure long-term survival on our planet.

The mycelia and the fungal plexus have gained in importance for me in recent months and exchange in the works as abstract or concrete pictorial motifs. As a metaphor for transgenerational inheritance and the emergence of things from the subconscious, they also represent for me the processes of social transformation we face in our time.

Hilma Af Klint, Jennifer Packer, Karel Appel, Ana Mendieta or Casper David Friedrich are artists who have accompanied and inspired me in my search for my own formal language in painting, to name a small selection. In my research I try to avoid a Eurocentric, male-dominated art history or at least to acquire a broader view of it.

Nina Lamiel Bruchhaus (2022)

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