Forest of Memories Painting

Réka Ritt Laklia is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in London. Her practice encompasses painting, VR, installation and photography. She uses motifs and materials, often imbued with folkloric elements, that emerge from her Hungarian cultural heritage. She alchemises her ancestral legacy of various crafts, including copper smithing and the intricate cellular patterns of folkloric embroideries, with the global cultural experience she gathered through travelling and living in many different countries. Her organic patterns are inspired by, but do not imitate Hungarian folkloric motives. Instead, her art is the product of a compassionate and sensitive combination of critical thinking and respect for traditions. "The creative process is to understand the narrative of my recollections, identifying the underlying patterns and dynamics that run across them and the parallel patterns and dynamics that run across society and culture. It is a ceremonial quest to find remedies for fractures in all levels of human experience and, in a symbolic manner, to perform curative corrections and adjustments, treating the artwork as a voodoo doll." In 2018 Réka moved, so that her studio now backs onto one of the few remaining areas of ancient deciduous forest in England, which brought 'nature' into her focus of attention: its beauty, of course, but also its natural ease with loss, death, and transient existence. It is a wonder how the individual organisms of the forest's ecosystem are connected, not trying to violate this transient existence on each other's account. "The woods enchanted me with its towering giant oak trees and busy wildlife. Some parts of the area date back over 8,000 years to the end of the last Ice Age. As if childhood tales became alive, an almost tangible magic lingers around the misty, moss-covered woodland. Nature's closeness helps me tap into my experiences in this realm, integrating its dynamics into my modus vivendi." Through her paintings, Réka introduces her powerfully spiritual take on the connection between nature and culture, exploring non-dualistic philosophies, mystical practices and other systems of spiritual exploration as possible pathways to reconcile the two.