The young Dominican painter Hulda Guzmán presents her first institutional exhibition in Europe at Turner Contemporary in Margate, offering visitors a dizzyingly beautiful escape into the tropical rainforest. Her works, filled with vibrant colours and mythical beings, transport viewers to the lush landscapes of the Dominican Republic, reminding them of the wonders of the natural world.
Inside the Studio
The first room of the exhibition places visitors inside Guzmán's studio, providing windows into the jungle from her private world. Demons from Japanese ukiyo-e prints torment the artist as she lies in bed, while lizards eye each other on a windowsill. Spirits leap from cups, ghosts appear as floating orbs, and angels visit a bathing mermaid. Everywhere, the jungle encroaches on the world, reaching through windows and smashing through roofs. These scenes are mythological and magical, a symbolist freakout in the rainforest with nods to Jungian psychoanalysis woven throughout.
Nature Takes Centre Stage
While the studio paintings are pretty but somewhat laboured, Guzmán truly excels when nature becomes the main character. In her landscape works, the jungle explodes into life with enormous trees reaching into the skies, foliage and fronds wrapping across the canvas, and fireflies dancing in the night. At times, the jungle becomes so rich and dense that it verges on abstraction. One work consists of a fog of blues and greens, a miasma of jungle tones. Figures appear smaller here, living in the landscape rather than dominating it—swimming in the sea, walking through the garden, or lying naked in nature.
Many of these figures are Guzmán herself, living her life in this beautiful place. In one image, she speeds past on a motorbike, transporting a palm tree to be planted. In another, she waters plants surrounded by her family and those recurring demons, now accepted as part of the universe rather than forces of evil.
A Call to Action
The overarching sense throughout these works is total abandon in the present—Guzmán losing herself in her environment. Faced with ecological collapse, rising sea levels, and deforestation, these paintings are celebrations of nature and its immediate, tangible beauty. Her art is almost political in its intentions, as the exhibition title suggests: nature asking you to wake up. It is a call to action, a demand to live in the beauty of the moment while it still exists.
Influences and Originality
Many of the paintings are gorgeous but also highly aware of their influences. The works incorporate pointillism, symbolism, and references to artists such as Hurvin Anderson, Dexter Dalwood, Henri Rousseau, Peter Doig, and Dorothea Tanning. Elements of Seurat, Gauguin, Kahlo, and Hockney appear, along with impressionism and modernism—all dragged into the jungle and revived.
The pieces feel like Guzmán looking at her world and thinking, "Oh my god, this is amazing, this is so beautiful, just look at it." And it is totally infectious. Nature is stunning, and these dizzying paintings invite viewers to be present in their own nature, even on a rainy morning in Margate.
Hulda Guzmán: Please Awake – Asked Nature Kindly is at Turner Contemporary, Margate, from 23 May to 13 September.
