Art Fairs — September 9, 2021

UNSEEN 2021

17  September — 19 September

Booth #63

Presenting works by
Margaret Lansink,
Elsa Leydier,
Anastasia Samoylova

At Unseen, we will present Samoylova’s newest body of work, Floridas. A logical follow-up to her FloodZone, a project on rising sea levels, Floridas zooms into one state of Florida to meticulously observe and reveal its cultural, political, and climatical starkness. Samoylova sees and shows Florida as a condensed version of the whole US while maintaining an outsider’s perspective and paying homage to Walker Evans. With her vivid bright images and sharp juxtapositions, she offers a test for endurance to the iconic American narratives of the American Dream. Naturally, a subject of the devastating effect of climate change and people’s disregard for it can’t escape Samoylova’s eye. This project was made through a series of wandering road trips, a traditionally male-dominated genre within American photography. Anastasia expands this field with a female perspective. Her angles are wide and the gaze is straightforward, yet her photography doesn’t reveal the whole story — that is to be discovered through unpeeling the layers of references.
In 2021, her work is shown at Musée des beaux-arts du Locle (CH), Orlando Museum of Art (US), Museum Helmond (NL), The Multimedia Art Museum (RU), The Print Center Philadelphia (US), Chrysler Art Museum (US) and HistoryMiami Museum (US).
Her presentation consists of the latest series body maps — a visual interpretation of the ambivalence between hiding, accepting, and fighting the stereotypes around women’s age. This project invites to contemplate if it is worth intruding into the natural processes. It interconnects delicate feminine images with close-up observations of nature where human intervention has left a deep impact. Lansink documented industrial forests in Portugal, grown for paper production and set on fire for the harvest. Neglecting the side effects of such massive fires on the living ecosystem, the industry thrives through indifference. Margaret Lansink uses photography to bridge the personal and universal. The way she photographs is purely intuitive. Her images present an open and honest reflection of her own inner emotions, shot as self-portraits in the broadest sense of the word. In body maps, Lansink combines liquid light, silver gelatin, and polaroid prints, applying to some of them the charcoal from the burnt woods that she photographed.
Lansink’s work in the past year can be seen at Photo Basel (CH) and at her premiere solo-exhibitions in Los Angeles, Paris, and Antwerp, as well as solo shows in Japan for her award-winning Benrido collotypes in Tokyo and Kyoto.
In her project Heatwave, Elsa Leydier looks at climate change through an instance of the wine-making industry. For champagne, a drink with a centuries-long heritable recipe, global warming is a threat. Fluctuations in temperature extremes are harmful to the quality of the grapes, and harvesting in hot weather is particularly detrimental. Ironically or not, the least desirable influence on champagne is ‘un goût de lumière’ (the ‘taste of light’). The drink loses its subtle palette of aromas when it’s exposed to UV light. Heatwave offers Leydier’s artistic vision of the relation between nature and the people who work tightly connected with it — as well as an interpretation of the climate crisis on civilization. She created her rayograms, cameraless images, by placing vines on photosensitized paper and exposing it to light. On top, as a filter, she placed tainted materials used to protect champagne from the light’s adverse effects. A poetic project to highlight the urge to battle climate change.
In 2021, Leydier’s works is presented a.o. at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles (FR), Encontros da Imagem Emergentes Award (PT) and Festival Photo Climat (FR).

Westergas
Klönneplein
1014 DD Amsterdam
online tickets with time-slots only

Opening Times 
Fri, 17 September, 11.00 – 21.00

Sat, 18 September, 11.00 – 19.00

Sun, 19 September, 11.00 – 19.00