Diego Samper

My journey as an artist, since the beginning, has been a journey into existence.  Through the exploration of landscapes I have gone deep into my own roots.

A curiosity to know wild places and a drive for adventure took me to the forests and rivers of South America. This became a permanent experience when I built a cabin in the Amazon jungle and submerged myself into the wild flow of tropical life. There, beyond the endless sound of the creatures of the forest, I started to listen to the whisper of the land. My senses, my body, my existence, tuned to the beat of the earth.

Growth and transformation, sedimentation and erosion: the flow of matter and time is the carver of places, creatures and things, as is the art that flows from my dialogue with nature. My work is about the skin of the earth, the thin tissue of life that grows from mineral, air, water and light. It's about its fragility and endurance, a metaphor of our own individual existence. It's about the endless flow of life, a single organism in constant metamorphosis. It's about our original and sacred dialogue with the landscape and its beings: it's about the transformation of nature into culture, and in doing so, the recognition of our own humanity. And it's about lightness, the state of being that has the same substance of dreams. Images, books, journals, maps and objects assembled along this journey are the testimonies of change and transience, as well as navigation devises.