PALE and willowy, Russia-born artist Nathalia Edenmont looks like she couldn't hurt a fly.

But the controversial artist has actually killed cats, mice, chickens and rabbits for her surreal still life photographs, angering animal-rights activists in several countries.

The 38-year-old is in town for a solo exhibition called Flying Colours, now on at Gallery Eighty in Teck Lim Road in Chinatown until March 29.

The work she is showing here is a lot less macabre. The images on show come mostly from her Immortal series of photographs, created using the wings of dead butterflies she bought from a dealer. The wings are arranged to look like leaves on a branch, flower petals or abstract landscapes.

Only one picture from her early work involving dead animals is on show: Janus, showing two rabbit heads on top of a U-shaped vase.

Prices for her artworks, which have a limited edition of six prints each, range from $14,000 to $25,000.

The Sweden-based artist tells Life! that she got the idea to work with butterflies in 2004, when she came across a woman selling the insects in a Moscow subway station.

She eventually got to know an entomologist in the same city who now supplies her with boxes of dead butterflies from all over the world. She also gets supplies from a dealer in Bali.

For some works, she cuts the wings off the insects and glues them onto delicate, leafless twigs. The result is a glossy picture of a spidery branch with delicate 'leaves' creeping across a black background.

For other images, she layers wings on wings to create a patterned carpet, or arranges them by colour and texture to evoke landscapes.

On why she is fascinated with the trompe l'oeil effect, she says: 'Butterflies and flowers share the same destiny. When you cut a flower to put in a vase, it dies in a few days. A butterfly lives for only three days. They are fragile and very beautiful.'

Edenmont has lived a life right out of the pages of a novel. Born in 1970 in Yalta in the former Soviet Union, she lost her geologist father at the age of 12, when he died in a landslide during a trip to France.

Like many people under the communist regime, her lawyer mother died under mysterious circumstances in 1984. She had gone to the hospital with stomach pains and did not come home alive.

The orphaned Edenmont remained in art school and eventually made her way to Sweden in 1991, after navigating the borders of Poland and Germany. She has lived in Stockholm since.

She has been married and divorced five times, and is now single with no children.

In 2003 and 2004, she made news for Still Life and Still About Life, which comprises photographs of animal body parts combined with other objects to make disturbing portraits.

For the rabbits and mice, she kills the animals herself but refuses to say how. Other animals such as lobsters and chicken were already dead when she bought them from markets.

The photograph that has provoked the strongest reactions shows a human hand with the head of a dead white mouse stuck on every finger.

She says that curiosity drives her to use animals in her work. She explains: 'When I make my art, I never think why. To cut off a rabbit's head and put it on a vase - I just want to see if it is possible.'

To her detractors, she says: 'What do you think they are doing in restaurants? What about your bag, which is made of leather? People don't think about themselves. They are sitting on their leather couch, shouting, 'She's killing animals'.'

She is an artist used to the furore surrounding her work. Animal-rights activists camped outside galleries showing her work in both Stockholm and Moscow to protest against her cruelty.

In 2003, the Swedish Veterinary Association reported her to the authorities for failing to have a veterinarian present when killing the animals she photographs. She won the case.

All this has not dented her marketability as an artist. Her work from the controversial animal series fetched about $20,000 to $40,000 per print and were all snapped up.

But the Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals (SPCA) here remains unconvinced.

Executive officer Deirdre Moss says: 'Killing animals for art is senseless and unnecessary. Animals are killed by people all over the world for various purposes. Does that make it all right to kill some more for exhibiting purposes? It reflects a lack of respect for life.'

Looking back, what does Edenmont feel about the controversy she has stirred?

'It didn't change anything, I was just surprised at how much I was criticised,' she says matter-of-factly.

Flying Colours is on at Gallery Eighty at 4 Teck Lim Road until March 29, from 10am to 6pm from Mondays to Fridays and 1 to 4pm on Saturdays. Admission is free.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Mar 4, 2008.