Dominican artist Hulda Guzmán's first major European showcase for her surreal and vibrant landscapes...
Turner Contemporary presents the first European institutional exhibition of Dominican artist Hulda Guzmán.
Spanning a decade of work and featuring major new paintings, the exhibition introduces new international audiences to Guzmán’s distinctive vision of landscape as a site of mysticism, ecology and Caribbean identity.
Drawing on Mexican muralism, Caribbean vernacular traditions and Western art history, Guzmán's paintings open portals into vibrant, dreamlike worlds where the artist, her family, animals and mythical beings exist in close dialogue with nature.
Guzmán lives in the rainforest mountains of Samaná in the Dominican Republic and this biodiverse environment profoundly shapes her visual language. Her richly layered compositions of landscapes and interiors echo the lush abundance of her surroundings while engaging with questions of Caribbean identity, belonging and the urgent realities of climate change.
Please awake – asked Nature kindly is Guzmán’s most extensive solo presentation to date and includes new paintings completed this year. The exhibition traces the evolution of her practice from intimate studio interiors rendered on wooden panels to expansive landscapes. Across these works, Guzmán develops interconnected themes of mysticism and the enduring wonder of the natural world.
An almost surreal sensibility permeates Guzmán’s work, heightened by a vivid, technicolour palette. She often begins her landscapes from direct observation before using Photoshop to digitally assemble and position characters within it. This method allows her to establish the narrative structure of a painting before translating the figures into paint.
The resulting works unfold though a fluid, spatial logic in which shifting scales, perspectives, and painterly treatments coexist within a single canvas. These visual instabilities introduce a sense of magical realism, inviting viewers to encounter reality as layered and open to interpretation.
Guzmán’s practice explores humanity's relationship to the natural world, acknowledging the Caribbean’s beauty alongside its environmental vulnerability. This exhibition presents Guzmán as a compelling new voice in contemporary painting, offering nuanced reflections on place and postcolonial experience. Her paintings evoke both wonder and reckoning. They insist we see the natural world not as a backdrop, but as a living force to which we are inextricably bound.
Free
Address
Hulda Guzmán: 'Please awake – asked Nature kindly' at Turner 23/05 - 13/09/26
Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate
CT9 1HG
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