Marisa Bellani
Exhibition: Polina Piëch - Painted Winds
On view from the 15th - 18th May at Photo London
Discover Polina Piëch’s London debut at Photo London, Roman Road Gallery presents Motions, a series that translates the invisible journey of the wind into hypnotic pictorial analogue photographs. Through her camera lens, she paints nature’s elements found on remote volcanic islands, evoking an olfactory experience in her presentation.
Piech’s exhibition can be found in the discovery section at Booth D12.
Marisa Bellani, Founder of Roman Road Gallery
This presentation follows a year of mentorship with Marisa Bellani, introducing Piëch’s distinctive photographic practice to a wider audience. A Russian-born artist raised in the UK, Piëch graduates this year from the RCA. Through analogue photography, she explores meditative notions of movement in the natural world, focusing on landscape and elemental forces.
Their booth, Painted Winds, creates an immersive sensory experience with an earthy scent that enhances the connection to nature. It features a selection of Piëch’s photographs from her ongoing series Motions (since 2023), which explores how wind reshapes landscapes and evokes fleeting memory and shifting perception. Wind is invisible—only felt, heard or seen through its effects—and is captured here as a breath of life and transformation.
Ancient cultures viewed wind as both creative and destructive. These symbolic meanings echo in Motions, where the lens becomes a tool for painting with light and movement.
Key works include Fruit of the Earth (2024) and Shamanic Whispers (2024), both chromogenic prints mounted on aluminium. The former captures an orange tree pre-harvest, conjuring citrus scent and the rustle of wind through leaves. The latter reflects Piëch’s painterly, Pictorialist style—soft-focus, dreamlike and rooted in nature.
Inspired by both the immediacy of photojournalism and post-war conceptual photography, Piëch moves in rhythm with the landscapes she photographs. In Painted Winds, she invites viewers to reflect on nature as both physical presence and imaginative space. Polina is also giving a talk as part of the official programme on Friday, 16 May at 3.30pm.
On view at Photo London, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA, 15–18 May 2025. For ticket details and more information, visit Photo London.
Polina Piëch