In this exhibition, Natalja Scerbina presents some thirty works on paper and canvas that were created through the cyanotype process. Devised in 1842 by the British scientist John Herschel, the vintage technique is particularly associated with Anna Atkins, a pioneer of botanical photography, who used it to create a veritable encyclopedia of plant images. A cyanotype results from the photosensitive reaction of a support previously coated with a chemical solution becoming sensitive to light. Once exposed to sunlight or a source of UV rays, an image in the technique’s characteristic shades of deep blue, commonly known as Prussian blue, is revealed.
Natalja Scerbina’s creative process falls within a post-anthropocentric approach to art, in which a focus on living beings, the non-human and marginalized materials becomes a critical act. Her work is fuelled by the heterogeneous items she collects, gathers, and sorts: stones, sand, pieces of plants, scraps, processed materials. They may be used in putting together works, or prove to be starting points serving as sources of creativity. Such materials, whether organic or the wastes stemming from human activities, become the vehicles for an ecological consideration of the sensorial.
Her works do not endeavour to dominate the material, but coexist with it. They make what is often overlooked perceptible, revealing tensions between the visible and the invisible, the natural and the artificial. Such a perceptual shift invites us to reconfigure both our physical and emotional relationship with the world, where each fragment bears the memory of its environment. Within this aesthetic of residue, in which works become ecosystems in their own right, Scerbina offers a relational, non-hierarchical interpretation of life.
About the artist
Natalja Scerbina holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Studio Art from Concordia University. Since 2006, her works have been shown in many group and solo exhibitions; more recently, they were on view in the 2021 exhibition "Outside the Frame: Works by Artists" among Us at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec acquired one of her works that same year, while the exhibition "De nos gestes fragiles" marked the beginning of her collaboration with Galerie Simon Blais in 2023.
