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Thursday 6 February

Camilla Engström: The Radiant Vision of Life

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, Camilla Engström (born in 1989) embodies this new generation of artists who shatter academic conventions with refreshing insolence. This self-taught Swedish artist, who left the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York to devote herself to art, offers us work that oscillates between joyful provocation and environmental meditation.

Her metaphysical landscapes constitute the first axis of her artistic work. Through her psychedelic-colored canvases, Engström reinvents nature with an audacity that would have made the Fauves blush. Her undulating hills and sensual valleys are reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe’s American Southwest deserts, but where O’Keeffe sought the mystical essence of the desert, Engström celebrates the pure sensuality of the earth. Her oversized suns, volcanoes with organic shapes, and melting skies create a universe where nature becomes a living, pulsating body. This approach echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories about the flesh of the world, where the visible and invisible intertwine in a cosmic dance. Engström’s landscapes are not mere representations; they are manifestations of what John Berger called “the way the world touches us”. In her recent works, the lush green of central California mingles with memories of Swedish forests, creating chromatic hybridizations that transcend simple geographical representation.

The second axis of her work revolves around Husa, this pink and voluptuous female figure who embodies her artistic alter ego. This recurring character, whose name means “maid” in Swedish, represents much more than a simple provocation against fashion canons. Husa is a scathing response to what Linda Nochlin described as “the systematic oppression of women in art history”. By creating this generously shaped character who flourishes in dreamlike landscapes, Engström overturns traditional codes of female representation. Husa’s breasts are no longer objects of desire but sources of life, nourishing the earth with their milk in a powerful metaphor for the relationship between femininity and nature. This approach echoes Lucy Lippard’s theories on 1970s feminist art while updating them for a generation facing 21st-century anxieties.

The artist transposes her environmental concerns into a chromatic palette that defies any naturalistic convention. Her magenta skies, purple hills, and suggestively shaped lakes float in a pictorial space where reality and imagination merge. This approach recalls what Roland Barthes called “the reality effect”, where the very distortion of representation paradoxically reinforces its evocative power. Engström’s landscapes do not seek to imitate nature but to capture its vital essence, in an approach reminiscent of the Nabis’ chromatic experiments.

Her technique, although intuitive, reveals a growing mastery of oil painting. The creamy textures of her waterfalls, the sensual undulations of her terrains, and the intense luminosity of her skies demonstrate an approach where the pictorial material itself becomes meaningful. This manipulation of matter recalls what Arthur Danto described as “the transfiguration of the commonplace”, where the pictorial act transforms simple representation into transcendent experience.

The influence of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint is palpable in Engström’s spiritual approach, but where af Klint sought to represent the invisible through geometric abstraction, Engström anchors her spirituality in the celebration of the sensible world. Her hallucinated landscapes are not escapes from reality but invitations to rediscover our sensual relationship with nature. This approach echoes Gaston Bachelard’s reflections on material imagination, where natural elements become catalysts for poetic reverie.

Engström’s work is part of a tradition of women artists who have used landscape as a medium of subversion. From Rosa Bonheur’s bucolic watercolors to Agnes Martin’s telluric abstractions, this lineage of artists has constantly reinvented our relationship with landscape. Engström continues this tradition while infusing it with a contemporary urgency linked to the climate crisis. Her landscapes are not mere aesthetic escapes but manifestations of what Félix Guattari called “ecosophy”, an ecological thought that unites the environmental, social, and mental.

The performative dimension of her artistic practice, manifested through her spontaneous dances in her studio shared on Instagram, adds an additional layer of meaning to her work. These improvised performances recall the experiments of the Judson Dance Theater, where everyday movement became an act of artistic resistance. This integration of the artist’s body in the creative process echoes Rosalind Krauss’s theories on the index in art, where physical gesture becomes a tangible trace of artistic intention.

While some critics might be tempted to reduce her work to a simple celebration of joy, this would miss the complexity of her statement. Behind the apparent lightness of her compositions lies a deep reflection on our relationship with the natural world and female bodies. Her deliberate rejection of the aesthetics of suffering, so prevalent in contemporary art, constitutes in itself a political act. By choosing to celebrate life rather than dwelling on the impending environmental catastrophe, Engström proposes a form of resistance through joy that recalls Gilles Deleuze’s theories on the affirmative power of art.

Through her dreamlike landscapes and liberated figures, Engström creates art that transcends traditional dichotomies between nature and culture, body and mind, joy and political engagement. Her work reminds us that social transformation can also come through the celebration of life and the poetic reinvention of the world. In an era marked by climate anxiety and identity crises, her radiant vision offers not an escape but an invitation to reimagine our relationship with the living world.

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