Porto Alegre, Brazil
Lives and works in London, UK

Paula Turmina’s paintings explore a convulsive beauty, represented by the figures she calls “sun worshippers”—characters that emerge in landscapes shaped by desert-like colors. The sculptural volumetry of her compositions emphasizes the monumentality of the figures, conveying a visual weight that transcends the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Her work reveals variations of warm tones that expand into vast visual passages, creating scenes that evoke an image of the past while exploring the possibilities of the future. These post-human figures blend into nature, suggesting a symbiotic survival in a transformed, arid environment.

These beings merge with the landscape as if becoming part of a new cycle of life, expressing a coexistence that goes beyond the human. Paula’s compositions evoke a sense of rebirth, where what remains of humanity intrinsically and vibrantly connects to the natural world. Survival becomes a form of adaptation, where the image evolves towards a new future.

The artist creates her images instinctively and viscerally, allowing her life and research to manifest uniquely without rigid planning. Turmina doesn’t adhere to a fixed system; her gestures flow freely through these impulses. It is within this space of freedom that she also explores her own experiences.

Her technical execution, with loose, gestural brushstrokes and compositions that break away from traditional academic rigidity, evokes moments of Brazilian modernism. She explores textures on flat and volumetric surfaces and takes an experimental approach to materials. Perspective and figurative representation are often distorted or reinterpreted. Paula constructs a unique imaginary world where the influence of modernism merges with surrealism, creating a space where desolation and renewal coexist, pointing towards an enigmatic, intertextual, and metaphysical future.