Hulda Guzmán’s paintings open portals into vibrant, dreamlike worlds, where the artist, her family, animals and mythical beings exist in close dialogue with nature. Spanning a decade of work and featuring new, large-scale works, Turner Contemporary presents the first European institutional exhibition of the Dominican artist.

Exhibition overview

Drawing on folk art, Caribbean vernacular traditions, and art history, the exhibition introduces Guzmán’s vibrant vision of landscape as a site of mysticism and ecological consciousness to Margate.

The biodiverse environment of the artist’s home in the rainforest mountains of Samaná in the Dominican Republic deeply shapes Guzmán’s visual language. Her richly layered landscapes and interiors echo the lush abundance of her surroundings while engaging with questions of identity, belonging and the urgent realities of climate change.

Please awake – asked Nature kindly is Guzmán’s most extensive solo exhibition to date, and traces the evolution of her practice from intimate studio interiors rendered on wooden panels to expansive landscapes. Across these works, Guzmán develops interconnected themes of mysticism and the enduring wonder of the natural world.

Nature meets mysticism

In Guzmán’s paintings, nature emerges as an active force and protagonist subtly challenging Western landscape traditions rooted in Romanticism and the picturesque. Her expressive handling of paint and colour conveys a palpable sense of vitality and magic—qualities that, in an age of climate anxiety, remind us to slow down and reflect.

An almost surreal sensibility characterises the work, heightened by a vivid, technicolour palette. Often beginning her landscapes from direct observation before using Photoshop to digitally assemble and position characters within it, this method allows her to establish the narrative structure of a painting before translating the figures into paint. In the resulting works, shifting scales, perspectives, and painterly treatments coexist within a single canvas. These visual instabilities introduce a sense of magical realism, inviting viewers to encounter reality as layered and open to interpretation.

The artist's practice

Guzmán’s practice explores humanity's relationship to the natural world, acknowledging the Caribbean’s beauty alongside its environmental vulnerability.

This exhibition presents Guzmán as a compelling new voice in contemporary painting, offering nuanced reflections on place. Her paintings evoke both wonder and reckoning.

They insist we see the natural world not as a backdrop, but as a living force to which we are inextricably bound.