Fire, Water, Earth, Air: Art Shaped by the Forces of Nature

For centuries artists across different eras and cultures have incorporated the four elements: earth, fire, water and air, into their work both symbolically and physically.

Symbolically earth has been represented in art to depict grounding, stability, and connection to the physical world. Air, especially in the dramatic, atmospheric landscape and seascape paintings by J.M.W. Turner, has been used to interpret movement, rapid change, and spirituality. Fire has been used to represent passion, chaos, destruction, and transformation. Water tends to be symbolic of fluidity, life, hidden depth, reflection, and constant change.

Contemporary artists continue to explore these four elements as a way of expressing the grandeur of nature and the relationship between humans and their surroundings.

Image: mabu/mubu/mmu, by Dineo Seshee Bopape, 2017, photograph: Sergey Illin

Earth

Dineo Seshee Bopape is a South African artist who creates video works and installations that address land politics and ancestral connections. In her 2017 installation mabu/mubu/mmu, at Venice’s Palazzo, she used molded and compressed Ukrainian soil. Within the blocks of earth, she placed feathers, ceramics, healing herbs, wax, shells, 18 carat gold leaf, crystals, coal and ash. She ignites a sense of memory in the viewer and presents the concept of sovereignty for both body and land. The objects placed upon the earth offer a metaphor for the wealth and impoverishment of land – those with and without. She considers her work to always be in progress, matter that is to be constantly reformed depending on the different sites and contexts. 

Cuban/American artist Ana Mendieta was known for creating ‘Earth-Body’ works. In her Silueta series produced from 1973 to 1980, she used her own body in relation to the earth, to express the body's spiritual and physical connection to nature. In these staged performances she would lay down within natural landscapes or cover her body in organic materials. These performances would then be documented as the imprints or silhouettes left behind.

Image: Aerocene Pacha, by Tomás Saraceno, 2020

Air

In 2020, Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno created an aerosolar, fuel-free hot air balloon that carried a person into the sky, and landed them safely back to earth using just the sun and air. The project was titled Aerocene Pacha. The balloon flew with the message “Water and Life are Worth More than Lithium”. The work was made alongside the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in Jujuy, Argentina, who are against the harmful lithium extraction practices in northern Argentina.

Since the 1970s, Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya has been making atmospheric installations using fog. Her first large-scale installation was at the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Although this is one that could fit into the 'water' category, her ethereal site-specific fogs constantly move and change with the wind and temperature of the site. The fogs transcend traditional boundaries by creating fleeting, borderless transformations. Installations have featured in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the Tate Modern in London.

Image: Untitled Fire Painting FC1, by Yves Klein, 1961

Fire

In 1961, a year before his death, French artist Yves Klein, created a series of works called Peintures de feu(Fire Paintings). At a French gas company test-center he used an industrial blowtorch to scorch chemically treated surfaces. The haunting abstract marks were used to symbolize fire's dual nature as both a destructive and creative force. He also used nude models covered in water. They pressed their bodies onto the surface before he burnt the areas. This left behind imprints that he stated represented the Hiroshima victims' shadows.

Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani, creates haunting shadow sculptures using dust and fire. He creates shadow imprints on walls in smoke to explore themes of absence and memory. His work Delocazioni (translated as displacement), is a series of artworks that show negative imprints of objects such as books, bottles, or human figures on surfaces, exploring themes of absence, memory, time, and dematerialization. He captures the traces of the objects. The artworks represent something that was once present but has now gone.

Image: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), by Bill Viola, 2014

Water

Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist that creates large-scale immersive installations using water, light, temperature, and mist to create a sensory experience. His works explore themes of nature and climate. In 2003, the work The Weather Project featured a giant sun with a hazy mist and a mirrored ceiling in the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern, UK. Viewers were able to lie down, sit, or stand whilst feeling enveloped by the artificial environment.

The American video and sound installation artist, Bill Viola, could be featured in all of these categories. His soundless video installation titled Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), 2014, presents four individuals, presented across four color screens, being progressively overwhelmed by the elements. The work represents the human capacity to bear hardship, to remain faithful to their values, and offer a contemplation on life, death, and afterlife. The installation was shown in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Do you have a favorite artwork or artist that explores the elements? Please comment below.