Today’s SAMA Featured Professional Member is Nathalie Vin. See more of her work on her website, follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Nathalie Vin – Wonder Where We Land – 2018 – Perspex materials on Perspex frame
Nathalie Vin is a contemporary, mixed media and mosaic artist, best known for her explorative and highly intricate work. Vin produces work in a variety of media. Considering the process, Nathalie’s work investigates the small and how it builds into a larger whole, putting elements together like a puzzle with the minutia of a clock maker.
Nathalie has worked extensively with architects in the UK to create large-scale public art projects as well as for private homes all around Europe. She has exhibited extensively internationally and was selected to exhibit in prestigious, contemporary mosaic art exhibitions all around the world. Her work has been showcased at the Medici Museum in Florence, the Musée des Beaux Arts in France and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, USA as well as The Lexington Center Museum, USA.
She was awarded with a ‘special distinction’ in 2014 of the famous Picasiette Prize and won second place in the 2016 exhibition.
From Paris to London, Nathalie lives and work now in Mallorca in Spain.
Wonder Where We Land, 2014, smalti, venetian gold tiles, Legos, glow in the dark tiles, polymer clay, clockwork parts, dichroic fused glass, computer parts
Nathalie writes: In my eyes, each individual tile is singular, beautiful and unique, and could even stand on its own.
Once orchestrated among many others, the tile becomes part of a much larger story, a story born from the harmony between the dominance of light over matter, the negative spaces and the sum of their actions… the shadows.
When it comes to my work, I do not look to Nature for inspiration, I guess I am personally driven by contemporary culture and existential notions such as: Mankind versus Nature, permanence and impermanence, the future and our attitude toward it, Man’s achievements and failures… Mankind is what drives me in everything I do.
Looking back at my work, it seems to always evolve first around ideas rather than matter and this has led me to search far and wide across versatile materials to find that magical ingredient that I can tame to express my ideas. That explains why I have worked with everything ranging from glass, ceramic, marble but also 3D moving images to glow-in-the-dark materials, holograms, gold and silver as well as recycled metal, plastic or wooden objects…
Mosaic is a well of possibilities allowing creativity to travel far. But it is also trapped in the middle of gravity and permanence, and this alone pushes me to constantly experiment, innovate, challenge and transcend my abilities to re-invent my work.