“The piece of work is my body, my body is the piece of
work.”
Helena Almeida
Helena Almeida
The conceptional Portuguese artist
Helena Almeida considers
the differences between photography and painting to be superficial as she
explores the elements of space and line which are central to both. And although
her works are documented by the photographic medium she considers them to be
paintings. As she has said “I consider
myself a painter. I studied painting and my works, as far as I’m concerned, are paintings. It’s my way of painting.”
Likewise, Almeida’s position about her
works being self portraits is strained. She is the subject of her works but
insists they are not self portraits but rather a study of the relationship
between the artist and the image. As she states “We look at the body and see
that it ends abruptly at the feet and hands... why do I end there and begin here? Why am I tied to this form, why am I isolated
in this way?”
From dressing herself as a canvas and
going for a walk or climbing through the slash in a stretched canvas to
painting herself out of her photographs, these private performances have been
documented by her husband over the last 40 years. Thus producing a body of work
that begs the question are the photographs a documentation of the performance or
are they object de arte?
To which Almeida responds “The image
of my body is not an image. I’m not producing a spectacle. I’m making a painting.”
The Exhibition Helena Almeida: Inhabited
drawings / Desenhos habitados is currently on show at London’s
Richard Saltoun Gallery until the 22nd of May.
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