Haven One

A visual tale by Kim Henry

A collection of nine dance silhouette images coming alive when the sun fades into the horizon

Kim: As a dance performer, my body is my primary medium of expression. It is also my refuge. Connecting with the world around me & to places within myself through art is what my journey is about. It’s a tale about nature’s beauty, magic seeking & presence. 

For many years, I made my body a vessel for other creators, mainly choreographers. I was trying to find my voice and my creative output in someone else’s piece, working to find my way in someone else’s universe. As much as I enjoyed these experiences, I discovered through my years of collaboration with visual artist Eric Paré that I also had the desire to be the leader of my own artistic expression. Dance photography has been part of our light painting journey since the beginning, in 2014. 

Part of the creative process, dancing in the location we will be shooting during the night is for me a way to connect with the environment, with myself and with Eric as he silently captures and is the only witness of those intimate dancing moments with nature. I tune in with my sensations as I let the beauty of the landscape move me and affect my state of presence. It prepares me in a way for the performative and almost meditative aspect of what light painting sessions require from me. I seek to merge with the environment as much as I can. Like a ritual, Eric & I have been creating dance photography during sunset & sunrise all around the world since 2014 in parallel to our light painting art. Photography and videography immortalize and transform what would otherwise be an ephemeral moment of performance into a timeless object of art. This part of our collaborative work is my creative voice, the visual poetry I want to share with the world.

This chapter of 9 images puts forward some of our silhouette pieces created within the past few years in 4 different countries. It expresses my curiosity about our ability to connect with the poetry of an anonymous moving body. When we don’t see the person, can we still perceive what is being experienced in a single ephemeral moment? Merging and interacting with the elements I’m immersed in is at the heart of my process. Capturing the energy, the motion and the emotion of a fleeting moment when the immensity of the landscape meets the depth of a human's inner world. 

Eric: Before we start our light-painting sessions at night, we always warm up ourselves by creating these dreamy images where Kim is dancing in a magnificent landscape. That is her time, that is her moment, and I exist solely to capture her visual poetry. We've been making these images for years and it has always been clear for me that they were for her: for her portfolio, for her social media. But now, as NFTs. Kim has the commercial rights to use these images, and I’m glad to give her full freedom through her creations