COLLECTING AND CREATING LANDSCAPES OF HER OWN

Talita Zaragoza is an artist interested in crafting relationships with places and landscapes. She reflects on ways humans interact with and interfere in natural environments and brings a myriad of perspectives in her paintings, photographs, drawings, and installations that pay homage to nature. By exploring lines and color palettes that resonate with her experiences and cartography research, her works are permeated with a search for organic patterns and shapes existing in the natural world and notions such as repetition, rhythm, and resonance.

Nature is the primary source of inspiration and reference for her work. Being outdoors, connecting with and observing the multiple elements and forces constituting these spaces is part of her artistic practice. Some of her works happened as temporary interactions with nature captured by photography. In these performances without a public, the artist draws in space and documents these ephemeral works to be relived in her photos. In the series "Fort Tilden" (2014), for example, she uses a metallic strip placed on the floor or into the air to create a brief intervention that visually alters frames of the New York coast. The series subtitles also point out relevant concepts that constantly appear in her work, such as "line," "grid," and "limitless." In "Draw a Line in Between" (2016), the artist uses distorted metallic wire and its shadow to cast forms on the sand, creating curious shapes in high-contrast photographs. In the series "Artificial Landscapes" (2013-2014), she questions what is natural or staged and what is deceitful in spaces such as greenhouses and golf courses.

Zaragoza examines nature everywhere, even wandering around the neighborhood or urban parks. In series such as "Along Silent Paths" (2013-2014), the artist captures natural formations with graphic expression in which we can see the repetition of simple forms building dazzling images. In "Naturgemälde" (2015-2018), she interferes with photos of leafless trees, painting some areas and creating masses of color that propose a different view on a simple but entangled form. The series title alludes to Alexander von Humboldt's proposition of a new depiction of nature, understanding it as a "living whole" composed of multiple forces and in constant change, ideas the artist explores throughout her artistic production. Besides her own experiences in natural environments, in her research, she looks at cartography and other photographic references as ways to graphically codify landscapes, searching for forms in nature. Maps and aerial photos, primarily from deserts and mountains, such as the Alps, the Himalayas, and volcanic landscapes are keen interests for their graphic complexity and a sense of serenity these landscapes convey to the artist. These landscapes are also remarkable for the artist, as one needs to look at them from various points of view to understand their magnitude better. These are referenced in her series of drawings,

"Volcanoes" and "Resonances." Made in high contrast, black and white, some with pen and others with graphite, these compositions resemble a topographic map with lines that expand from central points with extreme accuracy. However, unlike technical drawings, which provide a sense of stillness, the distance between the lines and the whole design of each piece with their different peaks evoke a sense of motion and give the impression that they are echoing. This feeling gets even more acute in installations such as "Driven" (2016), where her drawings take up an entire room.

Her interest in forms that are imprinted in natural elements, such as trees or rock formations, is also present in her paintings. Since 2017, the artist has been working concomitantly on different series of paintings, including "Sleepy Mountain" (2018-Present), "Landscape" (2021-Present), "Silhouette" (2022-Present), and "Fragments" (2019-2021), among others. In her works, she celebrates landscapes, but they are not objective depictions of a place; they are landscapes of their own. She seeks out natural forms and creates visual experiences that articulate her vision of nature. As imaginative abstract-like images composed of organic shapes, field colors, and lines that are at times repeated in an orchestrated rhythm, these works propose landscapes that are not fixed but animated scenes that spur a sense of movement. These allude to what happens in nature as the Earth is continuously in transformation, not only due to natural events such as volcanic eruptions, land erosion, droughts, or floods, for example, or as seasons go by, but also as time passes with a forward push by human interventions and climate change issues. Landscapes are alive. As borders move and countries are redrawn for multiple reasons, how land is controlled also changes, affecting how they are represented, even if one cannot see the change on the ground. The artist is also interested in addressing these transformations in her work. Through the elaboration of her impressions in the paintings, she projects herself onto the landscape.

In these paintings, the artist continues to dialogue with maps and representations of the natural world. Maps contain traces of territorial transformations and stories of landscapes, but they are commonly associated with objective depictions and are understood as emblems of power and politics. In her work, the reference to maps has a personal take that combines the artist's experience of places, her memories, and exercises of idealized environments. In the series "Imaginary Map" (2017-2021), she explores aerial perspectives with a diverse palette, including bright blues, oranges, and purples with dimmed greens, pinks, and grays. Painted on a grid system of multiple papers of the same size, the works resemble maps of places that seem to be in expansion, as if the land spread to the limits of the frame. Reflections on maps raise questions about representation and their influence on how we look at the world around us. Zaragoza challenges the viewer by assembling multiple points of view within a single frame, creating a particular and thought-provoking experience. "Sleepy Mountain" is a series of paintings on canvas of imagined mountain landscapes composed mainly of curvilinear shapes that seem to diffuse as elongated colored fields on the frame. At times, some forms shrink centrally, alluding to a peak, while they stretch as flowing rivers in others. These large-scale works convey a panorama of vast territories and bring together birds-eye views and horizontal perspectives. In some paintings, it is interesting to notice a continuous change of view without a clear shift; in others, we can even see the horizon line in the composition. The artist also employs grids in some pieces to combine different perspectives on the same frame, creating a coordinated multitude of gazes. In works from the series "Untitled" (2019-Present), other geometric forms, such as circles and squares, also appear, alluding to human interferences in the landscape as in areas designed for farming.

The artist's memory-charged landscapes don't propose exact depictions or total abstractions. Her pictorial creations explore elements brought from nature, especially lines and surfaces, but she has developed her own codified language to construct landscapes that engage our visual perception. And in the process of creating these works, the artist explores the idea that the way she sees landscapes is affected by what can be accessed by her memory. In "Fragments," a series of medium-scale paintings with all the works the same size, the landscape formed by organic shapes takes on a closer look, as zoom-ins. In some works, portions of the canvases are left exposed to be part of the composition marked by lines around them, reminding the viewer that the landscape is not fixed but in a constant state of transformation and to be observed and analyzed according to different experiences. As snippets and not necessarily connected parts, this series does not focus on extensive views but brings different pieces together, collaging narrow angles. In these works, the artist employs earthy blues, greens, and ochres, the predominant colors of her palette. The paintings are not composed in stark contrast, establishing a correspondence amongst the different and often varied tones. In the past few years, her color choices have been influenced by her observation of nature. Still, they have been chiefly elaborated according to personal connections to the hues, alluding to their meditative qualities. She explores soft colors with a silky finish and creates warm atmospheres composed mainly of blues, greens, yellows, browns, ecrus, and grays. In some works, the artist mixes paint using casein, which provides a glittering effect. More recently, in this series, Zaragoza has been exploring bright colors and tones less commonly applied, such as reds and pinks.

Zaragoza is an artist from Brazil who is currently based in New York. She has studied Fine Arts Photography at the International Center for Photography (ICP) and holds a Master's degree in Art History (2010) and a B.A. in Fine Arts (2008) from Fundação Alvares Penteado (FAAP), in São Paulo, Brazil. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Galeria Lume (São Paulo), Carmo Johnson Projects (São Paulo), Nars Foundation (New York), Carrer D'art (Miami), Lazy Susan Gallery (New York), Foley Gallery (New York), Emma Thomas Gallery (New York), and The International Center for Photography (New York), among others. The artist has participated in residencies such as Residency Unlimited (New York), Fish Factory (Iceland), and The Marble House (Vermont). She is represented by Gisela Projects.