WUNDERVEI

MAI NAITO

//Mai is from Osaka, Japan, now based in Brisbane, Australia. Always seeking beauty in nature, she developed an interest in expressing the psychological effects of natural spaces on human emotions. She explores this concept in her series “Wundervei”.

Mai left Japan in 2015 and moved to Brisbane, Australia to study Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art and Design, and grow in a new environment with better opportunities. Mai grew up in an environment blessed with nature and seeing natural spaces from the perspective of her imagination. Through her artistic approach, she aims to connect with the viewers through emotion, encouraging them to rediscover a deep connection between themselves and our natural environment.

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

Henry David Thoreau

What draws you to the arts?

“By creating art, I aim to reconnect with places, moments and memories. My favourite thing about art is that it invites me to keep my mind on the passing events of the world. Creating artwork helps me realise the beauty of everyday scenes that happen around us but are often unnoticed, and I appreciate the beauty of every moment.”

What do you like best about this photographic project?

“By digitally layering multiple photographs it is intended that they initially be perceived as paintings before the characteristics of photography become apparent upon closer inspection. The fact that viewers have questioned the painting technique used during exhibitions has been the most rewarding part so far.”

Wundervei is a series of photographs that explores the experience and memory of the natural world through photography. Wundervei means ‘The deep introspection experienced in moments of isolated silence during a solo nature walk.’ I thought this word conveys the mood and the message of the artwork in a poetic way, so I decided to use this word for the title. Inspired by my personal childhood, the work visually depicts my emotional encounters when passing through natural spaces. The work aims to encourage viewers to discover a deeper connection between themselves and the natural environment through sheer visual pleasure and appreciation.

To create the artworks, I took photographs of scenes and moments I was drawn to while walking around natural spaces. Then, I composited these images in post-production to create the final images. I define memory as an impression that melds visual fragments from different scenes that we see while experiencing an event. This multiple exposure technique enables me to collect the visual fragments over time from different scenes I have experienced, and combine them into a compressed single image in a way that represents the passage of time, thus visualising my memory of experiencing the natural space in physical form.

By considering the role of photography and historical paintings in representing the natural landscape, and in turn, our recollections, this series aims to question the opinion that photography is a mere technological process and a tool for depicting realism devoid of human soul or emotion, leading the viewers to reconsider photography as an art form that may be used for personal expression on a par with all the other fine arts.

Click on the photos to see a larger image in original dimensions.