Mar 31 / Stephen Anthony Farah

Landscapes of the Soul

In December (2025) I was fortunate enough to visit the Landscapes of the Soul exhibition at the National Swiss Museum in Zurich. This was curated and displayed to mark the 150th anniversary of C. G. Jung (1875–1961)’s birth. It was an eclectic and unusual exhibition, but one that I personally found quite imaginatively provocative. It located Jung’s work alongside other visionary artists and the early pioneers exploring the psychic landscape. It presented a rich and carefully curated exploration of the relationship between inner psychic life and visual form, with the thought of C. G. Jung serving as a clear conceptual anchor throughout. Rather than treating landscape simply as a depiction of the external world, the exhibition positioned it as a symbolic field in which the structures of the psyche became visible. In this sense, the exhibition was less about geography than about interiority, less about place than about psychic space.

Jung’s influence was evident not only in the thematic framing of the exhibition but also in the way the works were arranged and interpreted. The underlying premise was distinctly Jungian: that images arising in art, like those arising in dreams or active imagination, are not arbitrary but are expressions of deeper archetypal patterns. The landscape, in this context, became a privileged site for the emergence of such images. Mountains, forests, rivers, and horizons were no longer just neutral features of the natural world but also symbolic forms through which the psyche articulated itself. They were, in other words, expressions of the inner landscape and interiority of the artists.

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The exhibition traced this idea across a range of historical periods showing how different artists engaged with the landscape as a medium of inner expression. Earlier works often presented a more ordered and harmonious vision of nature, suggesting a world in which human beings and their surroundings were integrated within a stable cosmological framework. From a Jungian perspective, these works could be understood as expressions of a relatively intact symbolic order, where the boundary between consciousness and the unconscious remained clear.

This equilibrium began to shift in the Romantic period, where the landscape took on a more explicitly psychological dimension. Vast and often overwhelming natural scenes evoked what might be described as encounters with the numinous. The individual was confronted with forces that exceeded rational comprehension, producing a mixture of awe, fear, and fascination. The landscape here functioned as an image of the unconscious itself, a space of depth, ambiguity, and potential transformation. It was not difficult to see in these works a visual analogue to Jung’s description of the psyche as a layered and dynamic field, in which conscious and unconscious elements were in constant interaction.

As the exhibition moved into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the emphasis on subjectivity became more pronounced. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works shifted attention from the objective features of the landscape to the experience of perception itself. Colour, light, and brushwork were used to convey mood and sensation, rather than to reproduce a scene with photographic accuracy. From a Jungian standpoint, this could be seen as a movement towards a more direct engagement with psychic material, where the boundary between outer world and inner experience became increasingly fluid.

The modern and contemporary sections of the exhibition extended this trajectory further. In some works, the landscape dissolved into abstraction, with forms and colours functioning as symbolic rather than representational elements. In others, the landscape was fragmented or distorted, reflecting the dislocations and uncertainties of modern life and the psyche, or inner landscape, of the artist. These works often conveyed a sense of psychological tension, suggesting a more troubled relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. At the same time, they also pointed towards the possibility of integration, using the language of landscape to explore themes of memory, identity, and transformation.

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It was here that the exhibition’s dialogue with the work of Henry Corbin became particularly relevant. Corbin’s notion of the mundus imaginalis—the imaginal world—provided a useful framework for understanding what was at stake in these works. For Corbin, the imaginal is neither purely subjective nor purely objective, but occupies an intermediate ontological space in which images possess a kind of reality of their own. This world is accessed not through sensory perception alone, nor through abstract reasoning, but through the imaginative faculty. It is a world in which symbolic forms are encountered as real presences, capable of mediating between the visible and the invisible.

The landscapes in this exhibition could be understood as belonging to this imaginal realm. They were not simply representations of physical places, nor were they merely projections of individual psychology. Rather, they existed in a space where inner and outer realities intersected. In this sense, the exhibition could be seen as an exploration of the mundus imaginalis in visual form. Jung’s concept of the image as an expression of the psyche and Corbin’s idea of the imaginal world converged here, offering complementary ways of understanding how images function as mediators of meaning.

The curatorial approach reinforced this perspective by encouraging the viewer to engage with the works not only as aesthetic objects but as symbolic forms. The exhibition invited a mode of viewing that was closer to what Jung described as active imagination, in which the viewer entered into a dialogue with the image. Rather than seeking to decode the work in purely intellectual terms, the viewer was encouraged to respond to it as a living presence, allowing its forms and atmospheres to resonate on a psychological level. In this way, the act of viewing became itself a kind of participation in the imaginal world.

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Another important aspect of the exhibition was its attention to atmosphere. Many of the works relied on subtle variations in light, colour, and composition to evoke particular moods. A mist-filled valley, a storm-laden sky, or a quiet expanse of water could carry a strong emotional charge, suggesting states of calm, tension, or longing. These atmospheric effects were not incidental but central to the expressive power of the works. They demonstrated how the landscape could communicate through feeling and tone, rather than through explicit narrative. From a Jungian perspective, such atmospheres could be understood as manifestations of psychic states, externalised in visual form.

The exhibition also highlighted the role of the viewer in completing the meaning of the work. If the landscape was already an expression of the artist’s inner world, then the viewer’s response added another layer of interpretation. Each viewer brought their own associations, memories, and emotional responses, creating a dialogue between the image and the observer. In this sense, the imaginal space opened up by the artwork was shared rather than private. It became a site of encounter, where different subjectivities could meet.

In bringing together these various strands, Landscapes of the Soul offered a compelling account of the landscape as a medium of psychic expression. By placing Jung’s ideas at the centre of its conceptual framework, and by implicitly engaging with Corbin’s notion of the imaginal, the exhibition moved beyond a purely formal or historical understanding of landscape painting. It presented the landscape as a dynamic and symbolic field, in which the boundaries between inner and outer, subjective and objective, were continually negotiated.

For students of the psyche, the exhibition provided an opportunity to think about art in a broader and more integrated way. It suggested that images are not simply objects to be analysed but are forms of experience that can engage us on multiple levels. By approaching the landscape as an imaginal space, we were invited to consider how art can function as a bridge between different dimensions of reality, and how it can open up new ways of understanding both the world and ourselves.

I found myself enriched by this artistic expression of interiority and the proverbial landscapes of the soul. It also located Jung, rightfully I would argue, not only as a pioneering psychologist, but also as a mystic and visionary; expressing, as best he could, through his work, something of the ineffable. I think it is a great pity that the exhibition did not receive more publicity, and I sincerely hope the curators might consider future exhibitions of the works displayed. Whilst imperfect and provisional, I thought the exhibition opened up a pioneering space in the exploration of the convergence of the psychic and imaginal in the artistic medium, as well as better locating Jung as a cultural phenomenon.