Vivian Suter

Look Closer no. 4

Interview

November 2026

In Look Closer, an artist chooses an artwork for us to look at closely. In this episode, we talk to the Swiss-Argentine artist Vivian Suter (1949) about her installation at the Elleboogkerk in Amersfoort. Much like her own studios in Guatemala, here we find ourselves in a rainforest of oil paint, cotton canvases and rainwater.

NE:

Can you tell us what we are looking at?

VS:

These are actually three paintings.

NE:

Three? I see two… no?

VS:

Yes, one is in the background.

NE:

Oh, we have to turn around, of course. Ah, here. Beautiful. And with this one, with the light, you can also see through it. It’s transparent.

VS:

It is transparent, yes.

NE:

And the material?

VS:

The cloth is cotton, and I get it made in Guatemala.

NE:

Can I feel it?

VS:

Yes, of course.

NE:

I love it. So you don’t use linen? You always use cotton?

VS:

Cotton is what I get in Guatemala, yes. This is acrylic and oil paint, but I also use fish glue and pigments and rainwater, if there is rain. Or water, whatever.

NE:

Explain the rainwater to me. Do you leave the work outside when it’s raining?

VS:

I leave it outside, yes. The garden where I paint is full of paint and empty pots, and they collect the rain. Then I use it.

NE:

So you have a studio outside, and you work partly outdoors?

VS:

Yes, I have two places where I work, mainly three. One is under a mango tree, a big, tall mango tree. Before, it was a coffee plantation, but it’s overgrown and I planted more and more, so now it’s really jungle. There’s also a rubber tree. I took a branch from somewhere and planted it, and now it’s a huge tree.

NE:

You have lived there since the eighties?

VS:

Yes. And this tree has grown a lot of roots, so I always have to walk like this. But I like that. It puts me right in there.

NE:

Six years ago we used a photo of you working outside with pigments. For me it’s a photo about freedom. When I look at it, I feel this co-working with nature, and I love that picture. I also saw your beautiful biotope in Guatemala. You live in this biotope and you work with it, so how do you come to trust the rainforest as a co-worker?

VS:

Well, I don’t know who trusts who. (laughs) I just let it happen.

NE:

You let it happen. I even read that you sometimes paint at night, and then you wake up and see the painting basically for the first time. Is that correct?

VS:

That’s correct. (laughs) The other studio is up in the mountain, and some days I work till late. Then I go down, so I don’t know what the painting looks like. The next morning I think about what I did at the end.

NE:

And this was a church, right?

VS:

Yes, so I was excited by the niches, by the whole situation here. And you see here… (Vivian points at a a stained-glass window depicting the Annunciation and a bright red cloth hanging before it)

NE:

That’s beautiful, this cloth. Amazing. Is it from Panajachel?

VS:

Yes, and it is next to an Annunciation, I think. That’s what I was told. Then I had this idea, and we put it up this morning.

NE:

You put it up this morning?

VS:

Yes. It’s the cloth of Panajachel, a traditional cloth for putting the tortillas in.

NE:

For the tortillas. What a nice cloth.

VS:

And here are the niches, and I had this too. Look, put this here, there. I brought it along as a present. You see, this is the rain.