Tjaša Iris, GARDENS OF EDEN Exhibition, 21 June - 22 December 2026
Curatorial Essay
Gardens of Eden: Rediscovering Paradise Through Perception
The history of art has long imagined paradise as a cultivated garden—a place where nature and human imagination meet in harmony. From the enclosed gardens of medieval Europe to the botanical studies of the nineteenth century, from the expressive colour of the Fauves to the lyrical landscapes of the California Colorists, the garden has remained one of art's most enduring metaphors for beauty, renewal and hope.
With Gardens of Eden, presented by Indian Ocean Contemporary, this tradition finds a new expression within the landscapes of the Indian Ocean.
Founded in Mauritius, Indian Ocean Contemporary seeks to establish the region as an emerging centre for contemporary art while fostering dialogue between artists of the Indian Ocean and the wider international art world. The gallery's programme is rooted in a belief that geography is not a limitation but a source of new artistic perspectives, where cultures, histories and ecosystems meet to generate fresh visual languages.
It is therefore fitting that one of its inaugural exhibitions explores not only the beauty of nature but the act of seeing itself.
Rather than presenting paradise as a distant or mythical place, Gardens of Eden discovers it within the overlooked fragments of everyday life.
Weathered shells, seaweed, coral fragments, driftwood, washed-up coconuts and countless organic forms revealed by the retreating tide become the foundations of entirely new worlds. Through photography and painting, these humble materials gradually lose their physical identity and begin to exist somewhere between observation and imagination, reality and memory.
The exhibition brings together several years of artistic research that began with the Botanical Gardens series and continued during the artist's extended stay on the Thai island of Koh Phangan.
During the global lockdowns, when tourism disappeared and the beaches fell silent, the island revealed an entirely different rhythm of life. Empty shores became places of contemplation. At low tide, intricate ecosystems briefly emerged from beneath the sea before disappearing once again beneath the water.
For the artist, these temporary landscapes became living gardens—fragile, constantly changing and visible only to those willing to slow down and observe.
Photography became only the beginning of the creative process.
Each image undergoes an extensive transformation through dozens of successive interventions until it acquires an independent visual presence. Much like her paintings, the works evolve layer by layer until they begin to possess a life beyond documentation. They no longer describe nature; they become new natural worlds in themselves.
Colour occupies a central role throughout this transformation.
Influenced early in her career by the serial works of Andy Warhol, Tjaša Iris embraced repetition as an exploration of perception rather than duplication. A single image may exist in multiple chromatic realities, suggesting that no landscape is ever fixed. As light changes throughout the day, so too does our emotional experience of the world.
Colour therefore becomes more than a visual language. It becomes an emotional and spiritual one.
Running alongside the exhibition is a two-part documentary created during the artist's residency at the Isha Foundation in Coimbatore in collaboration with the Save Soil movement.
The documentary expands many of the ideas present within the artworks. It reflects upon cultivation, adaptation and humanity's relationship with the earth through lived experience rather than theory. Whether planting papaya trees, caring for wildlife or observing changing environments, the artist proposes that environmental responsibility begins with direct engagement—with learning, observing and participating in nature rather than standing apart from it.
Seen together, the artworks and documentary offer complementary perspectives. One transforms fragments of the natural world into imagined landscapes. The other documents an artist living within that world. Both invite us to reconsider what we choose to notice.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of Tjaša Iris's practice is that it is ultimately not about landscape.
It is about perception.
Again and again, her work returns to things that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Through colour, composition and imagination, forgotten fragments become objects of wonder. Matter gradually gives way to spirit. The ordinary becomes extraordinary.
In an age frequently defined by ecological anxiety and social uncertainty, Gardens of Eden proposes a remarkably hopeful idea: beauty is not simply something that exists in the world—it is also something that emerges through the way we choose to see it.
Paradise, the exhibition quietly suggests, is not a place humanity has lost.
It is a way of looking.
As the inaugural solo exhibition presented by Indian Ocean Contemporary, Gardens of Eden also reflects the gallery's broader vision: to present artists whose work reveals new relationships between culture, environment and imagination across the Indian Ocean and beyond. It is both the beginning of a dialogue and an invitation—to look more closely, to see more deeply, and to rediscover wonder in the world that surrounds us.
DOCUMENTARY IN TWO PARTS:
that Tjaša Iris created together with SaveSoil.org during her Artst in Residency stay at Isha Foundation in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India in 2024 - 2025. The documentary includes the artwork:
Tjaša Iris: STRANDED IN KOH PHANGAN ISLAND DURING COVID
https://youtu.be/otXJMh2e4_E?si=1QgKlwnZcNJlJ8Kk
https://youtu.be/dpKbdQVA5Kc?si=MclWiqtpqDjN_h7Y
Artist Biography
Tjaša Iris
Born in Kranj, Slovenia, in 1968 as Tjaša Demšar, Tjaša Iris is an internationally exhibiting contemporary artist whose practice explores the relationship between colour, landscape and perception. Working across painting, photography and mixed media, she creates luminous, emotionally charged compositions in which the natural world is transformed into imagined spaces that exist between observation and memory.
Raised in a small pre-Alpine village, her close relationship with nature would become a lasting foundation of her artistic practice. She began her studies in Florence before continuing her education in the United Kingdom, later earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Minerva Academy in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Following nearly a decade living and working in Venice, where her early Mediterranean garden paintings began to emerge, the artist relocated to Asia after the global financial crisis of 2008. Over the following fifteen years she lived and worked throughout Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India, developing an artistic language deeply influenced by the tropical landscapes and cultural diversity of the region.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Chiang Mai University Art Center, Jamjuree Art Gallery at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur, The Substation in Singapore, and numerous galleries throughout Southeast Asia. In 2010 she was selected as one of the New Finds at Art Singapore, an early recognition that led to a series of solo exhibitions across the region.
Often described as a contemporary colourist, Tjaša Iris continues a tradition that extends from Fauvism and Expressionism to the Nabis and the California Colorists, while developing a distinctly personal visual language shaped by years of travel and observation.
Her recent work focuses on the landscapes of the Indian Ocean. Rather than documenting nature, she transforms it through colour and imagination, revealing the extraordinary beauty hidden within overlooked forms and everyday materials. Across painting and photography, her works invite viewers to reconsider the familiar and discover new possibilities of perception.
Today, from her base in Mauritius, Tjaša Iris is the founder and director of Indian Ocean Contemporary, an international gallery dedicated to connecting artists of the Indian Ocean region with audiences around the world. Through both her own artistic practice and the gallery's curatorial programme, she continues to explore how art can foster dialogue across cultures while celebrating the richness, diversity and beauty of the natural world.
