NIVIARSIAQ

Niviarsiaq
Grønlands sjæl – Kalaallit nunatta tarninga – Soul of Greenland – Grönlands seele

Isbn: 978-87-90133-87-0
published in 2008
154 pages * 1250 grams (hardcover)

Gerda Nietzer, painter, Kristian Mainz, photographer and Kristian Olsen aaju, writer and poet, has created this unique book, that in words and pictures portray  flowers and nature of Greenland.

One of the tasks of art is to open our senses against beuty, to hel pus se, feel and sense all the wonderfull nuances, that hides in a picture, whether these pictures are created by words, painted with a brush or captured through a lens.
All three art forms are represented in this beautiful book.
Gerda Nietzer was in South Greenland in the summer of 2007, where she captured painted her impression of the astonishing Greenlandic flora

Gerda Nietzers colors glow with a vibrant intensity when painting the maginificant niviarsiaq or the distant background of snowy mountains

Also Kristian Mainz was in South Greenland in the summer of 2007. He is intimate with the motives capturing the moment of poetry in a flying raven or the dancing of lights and shadows on the colorful surface of a rock. Surfaces and shapes have their own lives in these both impressive and humble pictures.

South Greenland is the native country for Kristian Olsen aaju. No other Greenlandic poet goes behind the words, the clichés. He writes poems of his beloved land as fragile as dandelion seeds but heavy in meaning as a stroke with a brush.

Niviarsiaq – fireweed / Epilobium Angustifolium – the national flower of Greenland.

“In the summer of 2006 Kristian Mainz met the danish painter Gerda Nietzer, Svendborg in Galleri Molevit in Skagen, where she had been exhibiting summer after summer for years. Gerda told Kristian about her dream of making an artbook with Greenlandic motives. Kristian was thrilled and would like to contribute, so the project expanded. The idea was that photography and painting should supplement and support one another.

The greenlandic publisher Atuagkat run by Inger Hauge immediatelyconnected to the idea and brought painter, poet and writer Kristian Olsen aaju, who was nominated to the Literature Price of Nordic Council in 2004, to the project.

The book »Niviarsiaq – the Soul of Greenland!« became a reality. Paintings, photographs and poems celebrate the flowerblooms og Greenlands and interprets the tough conditions of the flowers.

It became an incredible beautiful book, where the crispy poems support the pictures.

The paintings and photogrphs in large format was exhibited in Katuaq in Nuuk, Greenland and Rundetaarn in Copenhagen

“Bluebells and cascading waterfalls”
Niviarsiaq – the soul of Greenlands invites the public on a journey in the amazing nature of Greenland where ice and rocks are the background for colorful and fragile flowers: buttercups, bluebells and fireweed in sharp contrast to the blue and greenish rocks and the cool mirrorshiny sea. Over the sea flies the raven and one can sense the spicy sents, that blends with the cascading waters and the sunlit nights.”