Artist: Eden Seifu
Exhibition title: Nature Boy
Venue: MONTI8, Latina, Italy
Date: July 12 – August 28, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and MONTI8
MONTI8 is thrilled to present “Eden Seifu – Nature Boy”, first European exhibition of the artist.
Eden Seifu was born in 1996 and lives and works in Seattle. After a year from the beautiful solo show with Deli Gallery in New York last year, on this occasion Seifu presents a new bosy of paintings that start a new direction in her practice and are imbued with new meanings and references, even though her style is always recognizable. Wether working on a large scale or small size, every work conveys a strong energy nourished by mysticism, by the relationship between man and nature and by the personal story of the artist, combining elements that remind something magic and ancestral.
As the artist wrote in the text for the show, this new series is the result of a full immersion in life and nature: The eight paintings in Nature Boy are but mere additions to a lineage that very well may extend back to when humans could first fathom time. They synthesize stories from around the world, varying traditions and numerous veins of mysticism with the artist’s personal tales. A backpacking trip the artist took connects to the arduous route a priest in Tigray must take to get to a holy site, a night of friends skinny-dipping is at once an echo of The Fall and Ovid’s account of the creation of the Salmacis fountain.
The title Nature Boy is an homage to the Nat King Cole song wrote in 1961, which tells tell the story of a young shy boy – named Eden too! – with a real thirst of Knowledge. But after the ecnounter with an old wise man, he will learn that the only thing that matters in life is just to love and be loved in return.
