Mother Earth

Her most recent body of work, Mother Earth, addresses environmental issues through a layered mixed media approach. Scenes of human habitation behind acrylic speak to the plastic walls that we imagine can safely separate the things we do from having an impact on the natural world. These scenes are then affixed onto and within sweeping landscapes. Presented without glass, the constructed world behind the acrylic is literally protected, while the landscapes remain exposed and vulnerable. A continuity of line and color between these two parts of the work hints at their interconnectedness. The desert southwest of the United States serves as a stand-in for what the majority of the land on our planet might look like as it continues to be shaped by rising temperatures, drought, and fires. Finally, the images are presented in hand-painted wooden frames, alluding to the next chapter in the planet's history. As the image pushes beyond its edges, the story continues to evolve. In spite of human activity, the Earth continues to transform and reinvent itself. The Earth is not coming to an end. Its inhabitants cannot escape its permanence, and the power it has to shape their existence. This work asks, as nature reinvents itself, can we adapt with it? The planet's ability to regenerate itself is a given. Can we do the same?

ARTIST BIO

Diana Cheren Nygren is a fine art photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her work explores the way people relate to each other and to their physical environment, be it urban, rural, or natural. She uses the ability of photography to give concrete form to ideas, in order to envision family, future, and possibility. Diana’s photographs address serious social questions through a blend of documentary practice, invention, and humor.

Diana was trained as an art historian with a focus on modern and contemporary art, and the relationship of artistic production to its socio-political context. Her emphasis on careful composition in her photographic work, as well as her subject matter, reflects this training. Her work as a photographer is the culmination of a life-long investment in the power of art and visual culture to shape and influence social change.

“I love an unpopulated landscape or a sky filled with nothing but light and color. I believe that both my landscape photographs and the urban ones are portraits. Portraits not of individuals, but of cities and locations, remarkable for their distinct character. The message in photography is to slow down and appreciate that character, to take it in thoughtfully, to wonder at the beauty of the dunes and how dramatically they capture light.”