Group Exhibitions include Tomorrow is Tomorrow, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); Nature Holds a Mirror, Ambar Quijano, online (2023); Membrane, Solo Show, Sens Gallery, Hong Kong (2023); There is Nothing New Under the Sun. but there are New Suns, Mama Projects, Bienvenue Art Fair, Paris, France (2022); In transit, our memory fragments, Chelsea Space, London, UK (2022); The Red Room, Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery, Cromwell Place, London, UK (2022); Wish Lush, Kravitz Contemporary, London, UK (2022); Liquid Frictions, Ambar Quijano, online (2022); Decomposiçāo e Fetiche’, Vivian Caccuri Atelier, RJ, Brazil (2022); Summer Show 2021, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK (2021); Spiral Trap, Lewisham Art House, london, UK (2021) In Reverie, Acava Studios, London, UK (2021); Female Gaze, Kupfer Gallery at Artsy, online (2021); Up Close and Personal, The Curators x Dynamisk, online (2021); It’s a Strange World, Heloisa Genish x Vortic.art, online (2021); Sun Worshippers, Goldmail Gallery, online (2021); Polinizações Cruzadas, online publication platform by Bruno Kurru (2020); London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2020); Casa da Escada Colorida, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); Monsters, The Function Suite, London, UK (2020); RCA & SLADE Graduate Show, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2020); CAC Trust Recipients 2020, Chelsea Arts Club, London, UK (2019); Neo Norte 2.0, Exposed Arts Projects, London, UK (2019). Plants Speak, If We Listen’ Symposium II, Chisenhale Studios, London (2019); Plants Speak, If We Listen’ Symposium I, Blacktower Projects, London (2019); Alter Us Collective, The Old Baths, London, UK (2019); OPEN: Emotional Practices, RCA London, UK (2019); Research Images as Art / Art Images as Research – UCL, London, UK (2019); Anthropologies, TAM, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria (2019); Pulling Teeth, ASC Gallery, London, UK (2019); The Land of No Evil, Offshoot Gallery, London, UK (2019); Cartoons and Cereals, Offshoot Gallery, London, UK (2019); Hoc Eva, Eve Leibe Gallery, London, UK (2019); Speculative Immersion: Multimedia Anthropology in the Anthropocene, UCL, London, UK (2019); Neo Norte, Funfación Cultural de Providencia, Santiago, Chile (2018); Latin America Myth Deconstruction, Crypt Gallery, London, UK (2018); Being Together is not Enough, Five Years Gallery, London, UK (2018); The Six Senses, Galeria Melissa, New York, USA (2018); Fragmentario x Plantaphilia, Booth at SXSW Festival, Austin, USA (2018); Degree Show, Wimbledon College of Arts, London, UK (2016); Merton Arts Trail, Morden Hall Park, London, UK (2015); Space, Jonathan Ross’s Gallery 286, London, UK (2015); Lucidez, Guadalupe, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2013); Sala Ilustrada, Urban Arts, Sāo Paulo, Brazil (2013).

 

The colours infiltrate not just the landscape, but also the characters’ skin, creating an impression of both warmth and claustrophobia. In Pollinating/sprouting/decaying, the largest of the works on display, which depicts the rising and setting of the sun, we encounter three characters collapsed into the earth – one appears to be literally melting in the heat, their long limbs snaking around two pools of stagnant water, while another, striking for their pregnant belly, is in the process of being melded into the trunk of a tree and the third is sprouting green shoots from their nipples and belly button. To the left of canvas, in the darker light of the moon, another three figures are caught in a trance-like state or some kind of ritualistic practice, which is taking place just beyond the frame of the image. It’s a curious scene that sits somewhere between the uncanny realm of fairy-tale and a feverish dystopian dream.

 

For Turmina, her work is as much about hope as it is a forecast of doom. Hope that is found not just in the rejuvenation of the environment – in the fragile, yellowing stems that grow up through the cracks of the dried earth – but in the connections between her characters and their reverence for nature. Unlike much of the human race, her figures are adaptable to and embracing of the world that they live in. This is represented both through their physical fluidity – they are genderless, with soft, bendable limbs that mimic the shapes of the landscape (in some of the paintings an arm has even come detached and lies curled like a snake on a bed of brown grass) – and their actions. In All the things she said, two figures appear with their arms curved around a flaming tree, engaged in what could be some kind of mating ritual or an act of collective healing, while in Prayers to many circles, another two figures are cradling the glowing orb of the sun.

 

‘I was interested in imagining what it would take for something to thrive in a barren space and to create harmony in chaos,’ says Turmina, ‘because chaos is a natural part of life.’ In her paintings, a state of harmony and ‘thriving’ is achieved through powerful interconnection – between the self and the other, the body and the landscape, the earth, and the celestial realms.