Meet Barbara Nati – The Hari Art Prize 2022 Runner-Up

My work has been increasingly focusing on an issue I cannot get my head around: the hypocrisy of contemporary living. The true meaning of my message is to highlight the dramatic relationship between Nature and Man. If humans, on the one hand, have subverted the natural order by disrupting the environment with their activities, by bending nature with the destructive mindlessness of their globalised systems, on the other hand, nature itself is reclaiming its spaces and regaining its own balance, which is once again emerging as the only viable one.

Despite the apparent hopelessness, these scenarios actually reveal, behind their inescapable morality, a reconciling aspect too that consists in the everlasting regenerative power of the natural element. This enables Nature to overcome any abuse imposed by man and his apparent supremacy.

The Earth’s seas produce half of the planet’s oxygen and absorb more than a third of its carbon dioxide, as well as interacting with atmospheric currents and thus the global climate. Changes that in recent decades have unfortunately led to an increase in overall volume, an increase in average temperature, pollution, and acidification of waters. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to increased carbon dioxide in the waters of the oceans, resulting in a decrease in pH and the subsequent dissolution of calcium carbonate structures such as shells and mollusks, plankton, and corals.

As a consequence, entire coral reefs have died and others have suffered a setback in development; the variety of shapes and colours of these natural structures has been replaced by white, translucent, ghostly outlines. The same outcome seems to have occurred for human structures, my digital elaborations: buildings transmuted into evanescent constructions. Concrete, brick, steel, everything is corroded and dematerialised, and all that remains of human engineering works are transparent facades. Man and nature seem at first glance to share a similar curse, but on closer reflection very different feelings for the two fates emerge.

I can’t wait to get started. It’s a completely different context than the suburban one in which I have carried out my last two residencies (in southern Sweden in 2013 and in Half Moon Bay, California in 2022). I have not lived in central London for eight years now and, however fast, frequent commuting can be an economic burden as well as a hassle because of the restrictions of the last couple of years. So spending as long as it takes to make the most of all the amenities the city has to offer may not be as easy as it sounds.

As for my next pieces I have many ideas running through my head out of which I could possibly select the next project. However, I would like to work toward one or two specific pieces exclusively tailored to the residency program.

Are there any upcoming projects you want to talk to us about?

This is an eventful time for me indeed. At the moment I am finishing the series on ocean acidification and a piece of the series will go on display at the royal Cambrian academy of art. At the beginning of the new year, as Photography /Digital Art Category Winner of the VAO22 I will participate in the gallery exhibition and at the end of January two of my works will become part of a collection exhibited at King Edward VII’s Hospital in a Contemporary art in hospitals’ initiative in partnership with Zimmer Stuart Gallery.