Helene Black: 2002 :: No Choice

Morphi Gallery, Limassol, Cyprus
Solo show
10-30 Apr 2002

Article by Nadia Anaxagorou published in the Cypriot daily Politis in April 2002

No Choice, the second act of the trilogy No ID, No Choice, No Thing, is dedicated to the inner world of the Cypriot woman as she struggles to balance and redefine herself amidst the international techno-economic evolutions and the subsequent social and moral changes in her immediate environment.

The prologue to the trilogy, titled No ID, was presented in November 2001 at the Monagri Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art and was an investigation into the self and the other (ID) or a re – construction of the scattered particles that constitute the identity through memory, dreams, persons, lost homelands, parents, as well as words.
It is not by chance that the verses taken from Louis Perentos’ poem "Letter to My Father" are interposed from the first to the second act of the trilogy, working as a catalyst of connection and reference. (In the present show the artwork is presented only in its visual form, while the whispering loop of the accompanying sound is omitted).
Things change every day
time has vanished
there is no space left in our soul
We say we have houses, and they do not belong to us
we say we have children, and they do not belong to us
we say we have history, and it does not belong to us
we say we possess, and we have nothing
apart from our unbearable loneliness
Having photographed on the one hand ten young women, and on the other, ten old and middle – aged ones from Filippou Makedonos street, a narrow alley opposite the Limassol Central Market, Helene Black directs a structured interpretation of the two types of women.
On the one side, the young woman, in her effort not only to be but also to appear ‘modern’, in her agony to be on the alert, she completely rejects her past. Making a dramatic leap into foreign prototypes and trends, in behaviour, dressing and lifestyle she leaves a chaotic vacuum of uncertainty and pretence hanging in between.
On the other side, the middle and the old – aged woman who, unaware of, or often, completely ignoring the messages of the times, lives in hibernation, stuck in the traditions, mainly with the negative implications that the term contains and can be summarised as narrow thinking, conservatism and the rejection of the new as a threat.
Ideas and matter are processed through a profound communication ritual, creating an iconostasis of twenty photographs, ‘scene – painted’ by Helene Black. The positive aspect of current technology is enclosed in the photographic material, concrete result of precise computer manipulation and colour separation. Concurrently, the alienation that goes hand in hand with the fast paced technological hyper evolution is channelled through the stainless steel frames/boxes, where the images are trapped in between the illusionary refraction of glass and mirrors, suspended in a variety of coloured liquids.
The images of the old women baptised in the green gold natural purity of olive oil and sunflower oil as well as the pink softness of rose cordial directly refer to the happiness and comfort of resignation, generated by the secure belief in the repetition of the past. In contrast the young women, photographed in blonde wigs and designer clothes appear loudly provocative with their assumed self confidence, and their caricature femme fatal poses, immersed in the phosphorescent cleaning agents zealously used by their imported maids and in bright shampoos which they themselves passionately use for their desired halo of golden hair.
This fetishist insistence of theirs is condensed in the artwork Natural Blonde with the unprecedented care for detail in the organisation of dressed hair, natural and artificial, in a huge spectrum of blonde shades which alludes to ‘whatever glitters is not gold’ and mocks the paranoic psychology of the ‘fausse blonde’ who behaves after the passage of a few years like a natural blonde, who, having abolished her history, she is convinced that she was born that way. The polarised sheet which neatly surrounds the blonde mass refers to the passing security and the temporary relief that is provided by the feeling of ‘belonging’ either in the ‘natural blonde’ or the ‘traditional’ woman camp.
This categorisation, is to a large degree generalised and aphoristic for the ‘in between’ unexplored woman but it nevertheless manages to function indicatively as a leveler of human types at the expense of individual personalities and special characteristics. The stylised beauty consciousness as well as the monolithic insistence in past motives are but the two faces of the same coin which is translated into a failure of self – definition, due to lack of measure and self – knowledge.
Helene Black neither separates herself from this drama nor does she attempt to provide us with detached answers, functioning as a ‘deus ex machina’. She actively participates in the discharging of the tensions, assuming the role of the woman who is gasping for air, trapped in the moulds of confusion. The photograph of the artist becomes in the artwork Trapped, the object of analysis as she desperately tries to find ways out from self – imposed limitations and boundaries.
The crescendo of the self – refusal and the search into ‘being’ which often equals to ‘nothing’, will come, I expect, in the epilogue of the trilogy at Diatopos Centre of the Arts in fall 2002.