NOT TAKING UP SPACE. A POLICY OF ANOTHER KIND FOR GENDER, SPACE, THE ECONOMY AND THE MEDIA <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manuel Olveira<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hessie\u2019s work comes to light today after many years, no doubt too many years, immersed in darkness and silence deriving just as much from the artist\u2019s shyness as from her resistance to the art system; and above all, from her political stance and her deeply radical way of challenging and questioning many of the conventions in the system, which at the end of the day condemned her to oblivion and alienation. The exhibition entitled Survival Art<\/em> (1), presented at les Abattoirs, Mus\u00e9e – Frac Occitanie Toulouse in 2017 and in MUSAC, the Contemporary Art Museum of Castile and Le\u00f3n, in 2018, curated by Annabelle T\u00e9n\u00e8ze and Sonia Recasens, rescued from oblivion the body of work that Hessie put together from the late 1960s, when she moved to the mill at H\u00e9rouval with her family, together with a series of nonconformist and transforming matters which underlie the production of an artist who in humbleness and silence took up a divergent position against the status quo<\/em>, to such an extent that she did not take up any space therein. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hessie\u2019s work, forgotten and silenced for such a\nlong time, presents characteristics which distance it\nfrom the bombastic spectacularism and discursive\nsensationalism of the majority of contemporary art.\nThe piece entitled Silence <\/em>(1972) is a good example of\nthis, not just because of its name, which is self-evident,\nbut also because of its formal discretion and visual\nresistance, which endows it with a dull and almost\ninvisible monochrome.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a cultural context which favours efficacy, effectiveness, visibility and success, in which the market rules and every kind of production, programming and collection can be standardized (2), her work has gradually found its place although it does not fit in any of the spaces or the preassigned forms in the art system. She built up her space while she gave form to a language, a personality and a positioning based on a conscious resistance to the productivity, competitiveness and hypervisibility decreed by the system. She also generated her space by refusing to take it up and shunning conventional places, to such an extent that she created her own \u201cplace of another kind\u201d (3). <\/p>\n\n\n\n We could say that Hessie\u2019s work neither complies, nor spends nor takes up. Her work\u2014which can be analysed from many different perspectives, given its complexity, personality and subtleness\u2014enables an approach, in relation precisely to the media, the economy and space; or to be more specific, to the radical political position of not endorsing them, not promoting it and not taking it up, respectively. The exhibition came into being from this perspective, and also with the purpose of highlighting the special and powerful way in which her work puts many of the conventions of contemporary art in a predicament from the radical, libertarian and feminist perspective we find in her work (it is also as subtle as it is delicate). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The work of Carmen Lydia \u0110uri\u0107, Hessie\u2019s official name, seems to viewers to be brutally simple, as it is often almost invisible or camouflaged (especially in the MUSAC\u2019s concrete rooms) on the walls. This simplicity, nevertheless, means she can create a series of pieces which behave as radical othernesses in the current art system. Her work, simple and modest, just like the artist herself was, is an accusation and a sharp and incisive vindication. Maybe it doesn\u2019t mean to, but it could also be an extremely useful lesson of exemplarity in these times when it becomes necessary to claim \u201ca place of another kind\u201d to think of art beyond standardization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is something modest in this vindication; a\nmodesty far removed from the affected tones, props and\npretensions artists and academics sometimes employ\n(car boot academics, as Walter Benjamin would say). It\nis the Spartan modesty of someone who has spent her\nwhole life producing art, both in success and visibility\nand staying at home and in her studio for many years\nof scarce or almost no outside presence. This is why we\ncan say that her work is related to employment, activity,\nher precarious survival and her intimate and daily place\nin the world. Hessie\u2019s work is not just a canvas, a collage\n<\/em>or a piece of paper with holes in it: it is an activity or a\nspace in which her daily life and her political position\nfacing up to it reverberate. It is, above all else, a space\nfor living and ontological speculation; because to her\nmind everything (even waste from food packaging)\ncomes from art or becomes art.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artistic vindication, and so Hessie\u2019s politics, might seem modest and even extemporaneous, but actually it isn\u2019t. It is anything but modest, even though the truth is that it is modest. Hessie never claimed to be a professional who fitted in and worked in the world of art. She actually said that art was an activity through which life gained meaning as it mediates between the self and the world, a world governed by too many conventionalisms, which she decidedly and modestly opposed. Her work is not made to fit in or operate in the worldly art system, but rather to challenge it and at the same time to bring to light numerous aspects which have been falsely standardized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The system has classified certain artistic manifestations\nwith labels such as underground, outsider, art brut <\/em>and\namateur<\/em>, and has relegated them to the margins, as in\ngeneral they do not endorse the desired conventional\nstandards and professionalism. Foreign to fashion\nand the teachings of art, often outside the circuit,\nalmost always beyond standardization, most of these\nmanifestations share the fact that they arose from a\nneed to express, the conflict deriving from the collision\nof the inside and the outside, and the primary functions\nwhich either give meaning to the world or are held up\nby it. Hence all of them are configured as practices and\nspaces of resistance, as they challenge the status quo<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n These challenges and this resistance work in many\ndifferent ways and affect many different matters, among\nwhich we should highlight feminism, which questions\nthe whole patriarchal system, refutes the extractivist\nlogic of capitalism and challenges the neoliberal\nmercantilization of all aspects and spaces in life.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feminism (4) attempts to generate new paradigms of thought and critique to evidence the systematic violence against women. This is why the gender perspective criticizes some of the foundational methodologies and conventional political and moral theories, evidencing the partial, contingent and historically located nature of what was said to be a universal and ahistorical \u201ctruth\u201d. This is why feminism also redefines the relationship between the centre and the margins, and propagates a general revision of the whole system, in particular a revision which takes the politics of gender, space, the economy and the means into account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gender policies or femmage\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A large part of Hessie\u2019s work presents imaginaries\nwhich are related to basic questions (the meaning of\nlife and what happens to us after death) and to basic\nneeds (food, fertility and emotional well-being), which\nshe formulates with a diffuse feminist and essentialist\nperspective. We are face to face with a series of works\nof art which refer us to an ideal of pristine and original\nfemininity, related to nature and life, contrasting\nwith the supposedly warlike and depraved instincts\nfound in men. From this position, certain artists of\nher generation tried to look deeper into the essential\nexperience of the female body and its privileged\nrelationship to life and nature.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many contemporary authors, following the postulates of Walter Benjamin, accept the idea that once art lost its auratic dimension to the growing capacity of technical reproducibility, the only front left open is social condemnation and political struggle; but in the case of Hessie and other artists, their position lies in precisely the opposite direction to this trend, in order to evidence the otherness of the world as seen by women. This is her first political vindication, and many others proceed from it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 1960s a multitude of othernesses and challenges\nto the system in general (pacifist, antiracist and feminist\nmovements and those in favour of social rights of all\nkinds) and the art system in particular (antiobjectualism,\nantiform, dematerialization, performance, site-specific\ninstallations and contextual art, etc.) were developed.\nOne of the global focal points of these non-conformist\npractices was New York, where Hessie lived from 1960\nto 1962; this is where she met the artist Dado, with whom\nshe later moved to France. This independent, rebellious\nattitude, resistant to the status quo<\/em>, took root in her just\nas it did in many other artists of the time, especially\nin those with an interest in the feminist theories and\npractices that emerged at this foundational time.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the ethnic, religious, cultural or geographical\ndistance that separates artists, those who identify with\nthis political stance connect their work to elements,\nmaterials and practices related to femininity and refer\nto the myth of the matriarchate which yearns to build a\n\u201cworld of another kind\u201d that is much fairer. It is therefore\na paradigm that tunes in to numerous regenerationist\npositions which today seem more relevant than ever.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this line, many of Hessie\u2019s works of art seem to invoke the secrets of daily routine, nature and life, its rhythms and what is required to hold it up (hence the title, Survival Art, <\/em>chosen for the exhibition in 1975 and also for the one in 2017-2018). In relation thereto, we should not forget how Hessie answered Sonia Recasens in an interview, when she asked her about the simple materials she used: \u201cThey are fundamental elements, even elements that enable us to survive, more or less\u201d (5). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that Hessie used sewing thread in much of\nher work on fabric points in the same direction, as it\ngave rise to very characteristic pieces in technique and\ntopic, such as V\u00e9g\u00e9tations <\/em>(ca. 1969-1985). In the above-\nmentioned interview, when asked why she used fabric\nso frequently, she said \u201cfabric is a staple material for\nmankind. Getting dressed and being warm is one of our\nbasic needs, as vital as eating\u201d.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is no trivial matter, then, that Hessie chooses materials (thread, fabric, buttons, diverse trimming elements, food packaging and all kinds of remains from daily life), manual activities (spinning, sewing and sticking) and subjects (decorative, vegetable, primary animals) that are prototypically associated to the feminine and grouped together around what some art critics call femmage<\/em> (6). The term was coined by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer in the winter of 1977\u2014they included it in the feminist magazine Heresies<\/em>; the concept of femmage <\/em>alludes to any work of art created by women and in which objects are assembled or collages <\/em>are produced. The term is intimately linked to feminist claims, because it refers to a whole series of activities, often homemade and anonymous, which women regularly carried out in relation to sewing in many cultures, such as joining pieces of leftover cloth together by patchwork or needlework, cutting, patterning, etc., and which highlight their skill and talent in introducing collage <\/em>into their daily lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s work has traditionally been confined to the economy of care, among which are textile work and the domestic economy and tasks. Recycling all kinds of household objects, handiwork, the small size and delicate details, attention to daily objects, decoration, patterns and sewing all form part of women\u2019s skills in all cultures. They have developed great innovation and creativity in these skills, as can be seen in the collective exhibition Monochrome Neutral Gender<\/em>, consisting of work by female artists and creators, and curated by Juan Guardiola in 2019-2020 for MUSAC in Le\u00f3n (7). <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how, from a feminist perspective, an alternative\ngenealogy is claimed for collage<\/em>. While the history of\nwestern art places its origin at the beginning of the\ntwentieth century and highlights its rise with cubism,\nthe alternative narratives and revisions with a feminist\nperspective have claimed it as a practice and aesthetic\nestablished within the cultural traditions of women\nlong before Picasso or Braque created their first papier\ncoll\u00e9 <\/em>(pasted paper).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following this female tradition in the arts, Hessie assembles objects and decorative patterns from diverse places to create a very personal body of work that is further amplified by the titles of the pieces or series as a call to attention to topics related to essentialist feminism, so prevalent in her work: Boutons \u2013 Points \u2013 Trous <\/em>(Buttons \u2013 Stitches \u2013 Perforations), Bact\u00e9ries et Dessins microscopiques <\/em>(Microscopic Bacteria and Drawings), V\u00e9g\u00e9tations <\/em>(Vegetations), \u00c9critures \u2013 B\u00e2tons p\u00e9dagogiques <\/em>(Writings \u2013 Educational Canes), Grillages <\/em>(Grids), and D\u00e9chets collages <\/em>(Collages of Waste). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Consistent with the logic of collage, the materials that\nmake up Hessie\u2019s work have a diverse origin, and if\nthey are analysed consciously, they are seen to clash\nwith each other because they depend on divergent and\neven contradictory environments. The activity of the\nsubconscious, on the other hand, can operate within\ncontradiction because it is capable of transforming\nsomething into its opposite, and make both present at\nthe same time. This opens up a space created through\noperations of displacement and condensation that aim\nto intensify the experience from the manipulation of\nthe elements.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n This contradictory intensification, which can be brought about by the simple sequence of elements or through more complex mechanisms, influences the meaning of the object by re-situating it in a different conceptual or material context; it alters the laws of its constitution by identifying idea and matter until they merge; or it problematizes the object with iconographic manipulations capable of reactivating the complex and difficult question of ornamentation. The opposition of the conscious\/subconscious is typical of a drive related to writing and memory, which are also at the root of Hessie\u2019s work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Often deprived, in almost all cultures, of a voice\u2014and therefore of writing and memory\u2014many women have managed to leave the imprint of their voices. A brief investigation into cultures, rites, customs and traditions around the world of women shows that through their songs, poems and secret languages, things are handed down from one generation to another. Such is the case with N\u00fcshu, the secret language created and used for four centuries by the peasant women of Hunan (China) to write the \u201cthird-day missives\u201d, books that mothers gave to their daughters when they got married, in the hope that they would find happiness. The N\u00fcshu texts, embroidered on cloth, contained the feelings and emotions they wanted to hide from men and were burned along with the women when they died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n References of this kind help us understand the\nstrategies generated by women to produce a type\nof memory and writing of their own that focuses on\nthe elements they have around them and on the very\npersonal use they make of them. This is why Hessie\nresorts to typewriters, as in the work Machine \u00e0 \u00e9crire\n<\/em>(1978), but also to fabrics and thread, as in the series\nB\u00e2tons p\u00e9dagogiques <\/em>(1972-1973), or domestic waste, as\nin D\u00e9chets collages grillage <\/em>(1978-1979), among others.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economic and media policies\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Seen from afar, Hessie\u2019s work seems monochord, but it clearly shows the economy of means from which it arises. Seen up close, it reveals many nuances and the overwhelming humility that breathes life into it becomes even more evident. It is not only that many of the different materials that come together in her work are everyday objects, and a priori<\/em>, hardly artistic: what is important is that they are often remnants of the domestic. The economy, understood according to the dictionary as the \u201ccontainment or appropriate distribution of resources\u201d or the \u201csaving of labour, time and other goods or services\u201d, especially in the hands of a woman caring for a large family, is a crucial issue in understanding her work. The ascetic economy of means sustains her entire artistic attitude, which, in the end, is her most decisive contribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the remains of food packaging, clothes and other\nhousehold items, Hessie made a series of pieces (among\nwhich are the aforementioned D\u00e9chets collages<\/em>) with\nwhat she had at hand, since she had no money to buy\nprofessional artistic materials. Economic necessity led\nher to find a way of working that suited her interests\nand satisfied her need to make art.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only does her work look poor (emphasized by the abandonment and scratches of life exemplified in the wrinkles, tears and stains of moisture or rust that can be seen on her canvases), but it works by resisting visuality. Often, there is either minimal elaboration (Temps perdu<\/em>, 1972) or it is almost monochrome (Grillage blanc<\/em>, 1975-1980), or the least attractive part is shown (Lignes nou\u00e9es<\/em>, 1978); if a piece is coloured, it is covered with fabric (Autoportrait<\/em>, 1975-2015, and D\u00e9chets collages<\/em>, 1976-2015). Her work clearly does not satisfy the desire for scopic consumption and goes against the spectacular logic of the art system (8). <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is something revealing in Hessie\u2019s lack of\n\u201cproduction\u201d or \u201ceffectiveness\u201d: the libido of capitalism\nis productivity, while the libido of creation is gratuity\nand resistance. The tremendous investment of time\nin \u201cunprofitable\u201d and seemingly gratuitous activities\nis understandable because it achieves a healing and\nrefreshing benefit. In the aforementioned interview\nwith Sonia Recasens, when asked about the importance\nof temporality in her work, Hessie answered, \u201cIt\u2019s\ntrue, time allows you to travel with your mind. What\u2019s\nmore, if speed were what interests me, I would use a\nsewing machine\u201d.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The artist frees herself from these external production\ndemands and focuses on the internal logic of her work,\nwhich values humility, everyday life, the nomad who\nproduces with simple, common, cheap, transportable\nand easily foldable materials. The lightness of her work\nspeaks of the freedom achieved by not asking for or\nexpecting anything and thanks to a concept of economy\nwhich operates according to economizing rules that are\nalien to impatient capitalism, which in turn considers\nthe economy as expenditure and exploitation, while she\nunderstands it as investment and containment.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hessie\u2019s work neither satisfies, nor spends, nor endorses nor complies with capitalist patterns. Quite the contrary: she acts compulsively against the grain. According to Freud in Der Dichter und das Phantasieren <\/em>(Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming<\/em>), obsession is the compulsive repetition of a ritual that does not reach its goal. Hessie\u2019s work neither satisfies consumption nor endorses efficacy, neither does it underline productivity, but rather subverts or jumbles them up. \u201cScience manipulates things and gives up living in them\u201d (9) says Merleau-Ponty right at the start of The Eye and the Spirit<\/em>, published in 1964, and continues: \u201cOnly the painter is entitled to look at everything without being obliged to appraise what he sees\u201d (10). According to this point of view, the artist\u2019s activity is an enormous \u201cwaste\u201d of time and energy that serves to build something poetic and refreshing, but not practical. Thus, words of the order of knowledge and action lose their capacity to value or witness and leave a record of other possible perspectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as with marginal or outsider art that is developed\nwithout specific standardized instructions and is born\nof an intrinsic motivation and a vital need, the origins\nof Hessie\u2019s work lie in the primary and the experiential.\nEven though her work is not testimonial or anecdotal,\nbecause it lacks details and biographical details, it is the\nproduct of direct experience.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hessie records experiences and leaves a record of her memory. She is explicit, but eludes literalism. She is almost like a secondary witness. Her work is related to writing and memory, although not only to this, as the artist reminds us. This should be understood in the plural; that is, it would be more correct to speak of \u201cmemories\u201d, because she establishes a very productive dialectic between private memory (traumatic, suffering, biographical, experiential and intimate) and plural memory (open and in solidarity with certain historical events) that concerns and challenges all of us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hence her work not only refers to an intrahistory or an intra-time, but to something broader. Indeed, as Jean-Luc Nancy said in relation to memory and writing, \u201cyour gaze touches upon the same character tracings that mine are touching now, and you are reading me, and I am writing you\u201d (11). Hessie \u201cwrites\u201d for herself, but with a sense of life, and also of social responsibility, in a work that is elliptical, poetic, and at the same time related to the most primary aspects of life that recall the words of the poet Saint-John Perse, born in the Caribbean like Hessie, in \u201cOiseaux\u201d: \u201c[…] a stain stamped like a seal, but which is neither a seal nor a cipher, neither is it a seal or a symbol, but the thing itself in its meaning and fatality\u2013something alive, in any case, captured in the most vivid part of its fabric\u201d (12). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Policies of space and horizontality\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With all these materials and procedures a \u201creality of another kind\u201d is created, depictions and stagings charged with ambiguity and suggestion, with interwoven images that go from the domains of the anthropological, the individual and the private to the \u201cmicro-policies\u201d of the most radical agency. Hessie customizes the world, appropriates it and builds up her own place with the humble remains of existence, like in the D\u00e9chets collages <\/em>(1976-2015) or Bo\u00eetes <\/em>(1970-2000), in which she uses a wide variety of \u201cresidues\u201d from her life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In her work, the challenge of glimpsing what constitutes\nthe artist unfolds, her poetic or creative identity,\nunderstood as a gaseous process rather than a stable\nstate, as a phenomenon that is subject to a constant\nand very personal fluidity, a fleeting nature, mutation\nand contamination with the environment. If we add to\nthis the experiential references (Hessie is experimental\nbecause she is experiential), this explains the significant\nproduction of images of domestic activities, daily\ndramas and identity games that make up this \u201creality\nof another kind\u201d mentioned above. Art is, in short, a\npersonal liturgy that allows her to construct her place\nin a world that is felt and superimposed onto a given\nworld, or in a mythical world that is superimposed onto\nthe real one.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n This mythical feeling world connects her with the essentialist feminism she shared with the Nouvelles P\u00e9n\u00e9lopes (13), a group of artists with whom she was in contact in Paris and who worked with domestic elements, daily activities and feminine values. These ideas of femininity tend to blend the biological and experiential field with certain psychological characteristics, which in the end link the feminine to care, nourishment, empathy, support and affection, non-competitiveness and also with a way of being in space without taking it up, and if you do, taking horizontality rather than verticality as a reference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the traditional pictorial or scenic space, the centre\u2014or any other place where attention is fixed\u2014is usually the most important point. In Hessie\u2019s work there is no hierarchy: in general, the whole space functions differently, its meaning is different, and all the points have the same importance; this is why the layout is uniform and isotropic, as in the V\u00e9g\u00e9tations <\/em>series. Perhaps it is because Hessie does not work as someone who paints (vertically), but rather as someone who writes or sews (horizontally). In fact, we have already seen that her work is related to a certain idea of writing that takes up space in a uniform way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In all of Hessie\u2019s production we witness, among other\nthings, an arduous critical re-evaluation of the complex\nrelationship between the visual arts and horizontality.\nIn her canvases and collages<\/em>, the artist approaches\nthe relationship with the space of the piece and with\nthe horizontal plane from a gender perspective that\nproblematizes the usual conventions in contemporary art.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing, embroidering, drawing and making collages all have in common a use of space and a relationship with the body that is very different from that of sculpture or painting. They are activities that demand an intimacy and a close body position, and, in addition, a relationship with the horizontal plane to carry them out. To explain this issue in relation to Hessie, we will use the essay in which Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois describe the ideology and politics of the use of space, both vertically and horizontally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No space is neutral. Neither is the museum, as Brian O\u2019Doherty reminded us in Inside the White Cube<\/em> (14), nor the space of the work of art itself. Its size, the surface it covers, the mode of production and many other aspects involve questions of all kinds, especially aesthetic and political questions. Of all these aspects, some are not very evident, such as the importance of the vertical or horizontal plane, but they are no less decisive from a conceptual point of view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The use of horizontality in the visual arts in the second half of the twentieth century has a milestone and a hero: 1947 and Jackson Pollock. It was at this time that Pollock (immortalized in Hans Namuth\u2019s photographs in 1950 while he was producing his well-known drippings) lowered the painting from the vertical to the horizontal plane to work on it by letting the paint spurt and drip as a ritual act, pissing or ejaculating. In this way, Pollock not only developed his technique of dripping, but, in the words of Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss in the catalogue of the exhibition L\u2019Informe: mode d\u2019emploi <\/em>held at the Pompidou Centre in 1996 (15), he opened up the possibility for future subversions of the erect plane, of verticality and of \u201cphallic erectibility\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This concept that revises conventional practice in the\nWest in relation to verticality was proposed, along with\nothers, by Krauss and Bois in the above-mentioned\ncatalogue. Even though it had been mentioned and used\npreviously by Georges Bataille, it was they who updated\nit and used the idea of the \u201cformless\u201d in the theorization\nand reconfiguration of the field of art today. In art there\nis always a dialectical tension between form and content,\nand the concept of \u201cformless\u201d constitutes a third term\nthat lies outside this binary opposition and can evaluate\nthe conceptual and practical incidence of the \u201cinformal\u201d\nwithin current artistic production.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bataille came up with the concept of the \u201cformless\u201d in the magazine Documents<\/em> (16) in December 1929. In collaboration with several different ethnographers, he produced a kind of dictionary, which rather than providing the conventional definition of words, related them to specific activities. The work or activity he associates with the word \u201cformless\u201d is to rethink all the other words and categories used. Bataille said: \u201cPhilosophy as a whole has no other goal: it is a matter of putting reality into a straitjacket, putting a mathematical frock coat on it. On the contrary, affirming that the universe is like nothing else and that it is only formless, is to say that the universe is something like a spider (crushed underfoot) or a gob of spit\u201d (17). <\/p>\n\n\n\n This quotation is extremely important, because it\ndetermines the suppression of all the conventions\nthat define and determine reality, and that pigeonhole\nit into units of meaning, thus opening it up to other\npossibilities. The plasticity of Hessie\u2019s work (and the\nopposite, represented by the cells of the expanding\ngrillages<\/em>) is reminiscent, in part, of the amorphous\nconcept of the formless that is also very much present\nin all her work, especially in the collages<\/em>. The task of the\nformless is to question the inherited way of organizing\nand understanding the world, in such a way that, for\nKrauss and Bois, a liberating disintegration takes place\nthat challenges the world in all its dimensions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the concepts that are exposed and that need this liberating disarrangement is the conception of space defined by the vertical and the horizontal. In their essay, Krauss and Bois say that laying the canvas flat on the ground affects its \u201cphallic erectibility\u201d, which, according to Henri Lefebvre, \u201cconfers a special status on the perpendicular, proclaiming phallocracy as the orientation of space\u201d (18). <\/p>\n\n\n\n A spatial conception of a feminist nature should\nnecessarily unfold in a different way. The political, poetic\nand ideological implications of space determine that the\nposition, size, conformation and above all, the use of\nspace, should be different. Such is the case with Hessie,\nwho seems to find writing and memory deeply important;\nthey require a certain use of the plane and space.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another referent for Krauss and Bois when it comes to understanding the ideology and politics that govern space, verticality and horizontality, is Walter Benjamin. In an early text (19), the thinker proposes distinguishing the implications of the vertical and the horizontal plane in relation to painting, drawing and writing. To his mind, the vertical plane corresponds to painting and the representation of objects, while the horizontal plane is more linked to the graphic and writing, since it does not contain depictions but rather signs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking Benjamin\u2019s theory as a reference, they argue that Pollock\u2019s act of painting horizontally instead of vertically subverts the conventional privilege of masculine verticality as the plane of pictorial depiction (20). Actually, it is a halfway subversion. Lowering the painting onto the ground was not an end, but a necessary means to produce the painting, since once it was finished it would return to the art world\u2019s conventional verticality and recover its erectibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even so, even if it was only at the time of production, the painting had been placed on the ground and had adopted a horizontal position, and this had a clearly transgressive meaning that other artists took advantage of in the late 1950s and early 1960s in order to broaden the practices of art. It is sufficient to say that Allan Kaprow (21) in The Legacy of Jackson Pollock <\/em>claimed that Pollock\u2019s well-known images on the canvas on the floor inspired his early actions and happenings, so characteristic of the non-objectual art resulting from the immaterial and conceptual practices of experimentation at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This same reference was also evident in the famous\nfeminist performance Vagina Painting <\/em>that Shigeko\nKubota produced in 1965 at the Perpetual Flux Festival\nin New York. Kubota squatted over the blank paper\nand painted it with a brush attached to her vagina.\nIn an act that is as evocative as it is critical of action\npainting, Kubota attached a brush to the back of her\nshort skirt to paint on a large piece of paper on the\nfloor. In this way the artist challenged the assumptions\nand conventions that still prevailed, and still do, in\nthe art world, connecting masculinity with creative\ngenius. This work interprets abstract expressionism\nfrom a feminist perspective, a genre characterized by\nmale practitioners presented almost as heroes.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Politics of emancipation or the\nproduction of one\u2019s own space\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the face of this productive and significant heroism,\nHessie went in the opposite direction. We should not\nforget that she was active from the 1960s, a time\nwhen anti-object artistic manifestations proliferated.\nHessie\u2019s work, without being conceptual, processual\nor performative, participates in all of this in her own\nway. There is something in it, above all in the attitude\nthat emerges from her work, which always alludes to\nindifference or resistance to the effectiveness of the\nobject. It is as if she expressly makes it clear that she\nprefers creative action to the product of creation. It\nis, we could say, an objective attitude in the adjectival\nsense of the term: it has a purpose, but not a goal.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The experimental, the immaterial, processes and\ninteractions are common characteristics in the\nadvanced practices of art from the 1960s and\n1970s. Another, no less characteristic or common,\nis resistance to the reification and alienation of\ncapitalist production and consumption that was\nbursting forth at the time. Bringing the state of\nthings into the light and into crisis was the obvious\nconsequence, even if it meant paying the price of\nbeing relegated to the margins.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hessie was excluded from the hegemonic historiographic accounts dominated by men and by the figures of the artist-hero or the romantic artist because she did not fit into any of these models (not even that of the exotic artist); she was also relegated from the new narratives that try to correct the history of art from a feminist perspective (22) because her artistic production is not based on \u201cthe body, the construction of difference in visual depiction or racial or sexual identity\u201d (23). Hessie\u2019s work was ignored. The result was a double invisibility that led to her marginalization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marginalization was the fate of a woman like Hessie, who was neither white, European nor bourgeois, but she knew how to find her place on the margins. Despite the narrowness, she was able to build up a body of work that expands and empowers these margins through the ability to endow writing with a voice, and the most humble and intimate with memory (24). <\/p>\n\n\n\n This capacity places her beyond the \u201cprofessional\u201d conventions of art, to the extent that the attitude emanating from her work is perhaps her greatest achievement: her resistance to the standardization of the system, her unproductiveness and her refusal to take up space. Hessie seems to have gone through art without having taken up any space (not taking up space is a radical way of understanding the economy of means; and therefore, in her case, not taking up space involves \u201cpolitical implications of another kind\u201d), although she certainly contributed to producing it in her own way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the artist\u2019s mission: to produce space, but\nher own space, not a space indebted to the system.\nHessie did not access the space managed by the art\ngatekeepers, nor did she want to pay the price of the\nticket. She was not interested. She knew that this\nwas not the way or her mission, which was rather to\ncreate her own space, a space that was just hers and\nthat nobody could take away from her, and which she\noffers to others to expand the physical and symbolic\nworld through perception.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Hessie\u2019s imposed or self-imposed limitations lies her capacity to produce her place, and with it, her libertarian potential. Also, paradoxically, her freedom. She was \u201cimprisoned\u201d by the responsibilities of a large family and a lack of acknowledgement and visibility (25) by the art system, despite the fact that it was very close; she freed her work from the \u201cuse\u201d of art and left it transparent, experiential and fulfilled as an artistic and vital action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n NOTES<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1) The exhibition held at the Museum of Art in Paris in 1975 went under the same name, where Hessie clearly showed the foundations of her work. Hessie\u2019s life is enshrouded in little mysteries that have\nnot been entirely solved. We know the basics about her,\nbut numerous biographical details are often missing.\nWe know that Carmen Lydia \u0110uri\u0107 was born in the\nCaribbean, almost certainly in Cuba, on 17 April 1936\nand that she died in Pontoise, France, on 9 October\n2017 at the age of 81. Between these two dates, we can\nreconstruct a life as nomadic as it was discreet, but it\nno easy task to find the precise details.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know that she left her native Caribbean and that she travelled in the late 1950s through Europe (Spain, England, France, Switzerland and Germany) and North America (Canada and the USA). In 1960 and 1961 she lived in New York, where she worked as a model and copyist of works of art. There she met the Montenegrin painter Miodrag \u0110uri\u0107 (Cetinje, Yugoslavia, 1933 – Pontoise, France, 2010), known under his artistic name of Dado. He was based in France and Hessie moved in with him at H\u00e9rouval, an old mill that had belonged to the collector and art dealer Daniel Cordier, where he lived with his children. These little details allow us to briefly discover Hessie\u2019s life, but many aspects that could illuminate a secluded, austere and introspective life remain in the shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time as exhibiting, the 1970s also meant for Hessie the construction of her commitment to feminist movements, in which she played an active role, especially in the meetings of the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement. This effervescent period slowed down in the 1980s and Hessie gradually became less and less active, and enjoyed less and less public impact; she became somewhat isolated in the mill at H\u00e9rouval. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks to Daniel Cordier\u2019s donation, two of Hessie\u2019s works of art were included in the collection of the Centre Pompidou and are now on deposit at les Abattoirs. These pieces were included in the exhibition Elles@centrepompidou <\/em>in 2009, initiating a new period of attention to Hessie\u2019s work, especially since she was represented by the Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre in Paris, which is growing due to the quality and uniqueness of her work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016 her work was presented at La Verri\u00e8re,\nFondation Herm\u00e8s in Brussels, curated by Guillaume\nD\u00e9sanges. This exhibition was followed by another,\ncurated by Annabelle T\u00e9n\u00e8ze and Sonia Recasens\nand presented at les Abattoirs and at MUSAC in\nLe\u00f3n in 2017 and 2018. This book was first conceived\nto accompany the mentioned exhibition. After many\nproblems and delays, only this text could have been\npublished by MUSAC without the images and some\nother texts that would have constituted the catalogue\ninitially conceived.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NOT TAKING UP SPACE. A POLICY OF ANOTHER KIND FOR GENDER, SPACE, THE ECONOMY AND THE MEDIA Manuel Olveira Hessie\u2019s work comes to light today after many years, no doubt too many years, immersed in darkness and silence deriving just as much from the artist\u2019s shyness as from her resistance to the art system; and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etudes-critiques"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7161"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7171,"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161\/revisions\/7171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galeriearnaudlefebvrearchives.com\/hessie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(2) It is highly illustrative that Hessie\u2019s invisibility started in the 1980s, when the mercantilization, institutionalization and spectacularization of art burst forth.
(3) Michel Tapi\u00e9 introduced the concept of art of another kind (art autre<\/em>) in a book of the same name in 1952, to specifically refer to non-geometric abstract art (also known as Informalism) and in general, to show that another, different category was needed for a new artistic manifestation.
(4) Hessie knew many artists who were related to feminism. She played an active role in the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement (Mouvement de lib\u00e9ration des femmes, MLF) and in groups such as Femmes en lutte.
(5) This interview was conducted on 6 December 2014 and published in the catalogue Cosmogonies: Hessie, Kapwani Kiwanga, Myriam Mihindou <\/em>by Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre in 2015 (pp. 6-8).
(6) SCHAPIRO, Miriam, MEYER, Melissa, 1978. Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry into what Women Saved and Assembled \u2013 FEMMAGE. Heresies: Women\u2019s Traditional Arts \u2013 The Politics of Aesthetics. <\/em>New York: Heresies Collective, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 66-69.
(7) Monochrome Neutral Gender [Accessed 2 March 2020]. At: musac <\/em>[Available from: https:\/\/musac.es\/#exposiciones\/expo\/monocro-mo-genero-neutro]
(8) The maximum expression of this productive indifference are the apparently undocumented performances in her study.
(9) MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice, 1977. El ojo y el esp\u00edritu. <\/em>Buenos Aires: Paid\u00f3s, p. 9.
(10) Op. cit. p. 12.<\/em>
(11) NANCY, Jean-Luc, 2003. Corpus<\/em>. Madrid: Arena Libros. p. 39.
(12) PERSE, Saint-John, 1976. Oiseaux. In: P\u00e1jaros y otros poemas. <\/em>Madrid: Visor, p. 165.
(13) The term was coined in 1976 by the French critic Aline Dallier-Popper, the author of the introductory text of the collective exhibition catalogue Combative Acts, Profiles and Voices <\/em>at the A.I.R. Gallery in New York, including work by Hessie, Francoise Janicot, Milvia Maglione and Nil Yalter, among other artists.
(14) O\u2019DOHERTY, Brian, 1999. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. <\/em>Berkeley, University of California Press, (originally published as a series of articles in Artforum magazine in 1976).
(15) The catalogue was published in English: BOIS, Yve-Alain, E. KRAUSS, Rosalind, 1997. Formless: A User\u2019s Guide. <\/em>New York, MIT Press.
(16) A surrealist magazine directed by Georges Bataille in Paris in 1929 and 1930. Conceived as a \u201cwar machine against received ideas\u201d, as Bataille himself wrote, the magazine challenged the majority conception of Surrealism as represented by Breton and advocated greater openness to the hierarchies of form.
(17) BATAILLE, Georges, 1929 (December). Informe. Documents<\/em>, n.o 7, p. 382.
(18) LEFEBVRE, Henri, 1991. The Production of Space. <\/em>Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 287 (originally published in 1974 as La Production de I\u2019espace. <\/em>Paris, Anthropos).
(19) BENJAMIN, Walter, 2004. Painting and the Graphic Arts. In: Bullock, MARCUS, W. Jennings , MICHAEL (eds.). Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings<\/em>, 1: 1913-1926. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press, p. 82.
(20) It could also be understood as an act that turns the surface of the canvas into a floor, an empty territory or a mawat <\/em>that authorizes Pollock to possess it, because the painting appears on the ground as virgin space that can be colonized.
(21) KAPROW, Allan, 1993. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, <\/em>Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 1-9.
(22) Something that a new generation of artists and exhibition curators, such as Sonia Recasens, Annabelle T\u00e9n\u00e8ze and Perrine Lacroix, are trying to correct.
(23) This is the theme of the above-mentioned exhibition Monochrome Neutral Gender<\/em>, curated by Juan Guardiola for MUSAC in 2019.
(24) In relation to this, we should mention Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u2019s essay: Can the Subaltern Speak? <\/em>(2003) in which she sets out the ways in which those who are denied as subjects of enunciation find to speak, forms that include both what is said and what is silenced. In: Revista Colombiana de Antropolog\u00eda<\/em>, vol. 39, pp. 297-364.
(25) A lack that continues today. Proof of this is the problem and the delay derived from the catalogue of the Survival Art <\/em>exhibition that this humble publication tries to amend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE<\/strong>
SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Text translations to English <\/em> Mark Guscin, Linguistic Services S.A. <\/p>\n\n\n\n