Paysages habités
Series of serigraphs
30×50 cm
2026
Landscape anthropology considers the environment not as a mere natural backdrop, but as a space shaped by human activities, cultural representations and memory, often referred to as an “inhabited landscape”.
This series of silkscreen prints is based on fragments of landscapes from well-known 19th- and 20th-century paintings. These are landscapes that belong to the collective imagination, echoing a representation of nature.
By extracting these fragments, Elma Riza offers a more abstract or minimalist version, while remaining in the realm of the tangible, where mountains, tree silhouettes, strips of land and rural landscapes, and waves are recognisable.
Like a spotlight on a fraction/parcel of landscape, the white of the sheet becomes the material for revealing these chosen fragments.
The act of extracting one element to compose it with others echoes the way our landscapes are shaped. Both agricultural landscapes and lake shores are composed landscapes.
“Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructions of the imagination projected onto wood, water and rock.” — Simon Schama.
Elma Riza 