Hélène Meyer

 

Hélène Meyer is a Belgian artist who lives and works in Brussels, studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Her practices is mainly dedicated to painting, ceramics and collective research projects. Hélène Meyer joined The platform for Algae Diplomacy in 2020 and creates ‘ceremonial banquets’, performative ceramic installations and seaweed recipes in collaboration with bread makers, artists, scientists and seaweed harvesters.

 

Her work was presented among others at Superdeals Brussels, CC Strombeek Brussels, Pilar crosstalks University Brussels, Frans Masereel Centrum.

 

Tamara Beheydt wrote the following text about Hélène’s work.

 

 

Living creatures

 

‘La vie en tant qu’immersion est celle où nos yeux sont des oreilles. Sentir est toujours toucher

à la fois soi-même et l’univers qui nous entoure.’

(Emanuele Coccia, La vie des plantes, 2023)

 

Exploring the perceivable world around her with all senses simultaneously, from within and in the middle of it all. That is how Hélène Meyer’s work begins. The colourful, organic shapes in her paintings originate from impressions she absorbs daily.

 

A self-organized residency in Morocco, a few years after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, brought significant changes to her practice. Under the influence of Mediterranean light, shapes and colors in the most banal street scenes seemed unfamiliar and new to her. She observed architectural motifs, often with a botanical origin, and began working from these archetypes. Without reverting to exoticism, she created motifs, symbols, and palettes, forming her own visual language. Vibrant colours and dynamic, plant-like figures populate her canvases.

 

Although the figures in Meyer’s paintings are not based on concrete examples, they are realistic in the sense that they stem from recognizable (botanical) motifs. Shape and colour are life-affirming criteria, necessary to imagine that something exists. The philosopher David Hume writes about two types of representations. Firstly, there are direct Impressions from sensory perception, which immediately generate indisputable knowledge. It is true because we experience it ourselves, ‘see it with our own eyes.’ Secondly, there are also Ideas, representations based on memories of previous experiences. The further removed these are from an actual observation, the greater the involvement of imagination. However, a core of recognizability ensures that we accept these representations or ideas as possibilities.

 

For all life forms we can observe or understand, and which humanity has already discovered, analyzed, and categorized, there are likely hundreds that we do not know of, which perhaps existed before humans, or which have yet to come to life. They are not proven to be real, but neither can they be dismissed as completely fictitious; they are speculative.

 

‘Speculative’ is a term Meyer sometimes uses in the context of her work, and it has already appeared in her titles. While she studied at the Royal Academy, and her aesthetic was very different, dreams and the unconscious played a substantial part in her artistic research. She was particularly inspired by Carl Jung’s theories of the unconscious creation of metaphors and symbols in dreams, as representations of concepts that humans cannot fully comprehend. This naturally leads to existential questions: which concepts or life forms can we understand, as humans, and which can’t we? If existing symbols represent new organisms, is it conceivable that new symbols could reveal unknown species? The organic, amorphous creatures in her paintings represent species that could have been, perhaps exist beyond our knowledge, or might yet develop. Her current characters, as she calls them, align with what Hume describes as Ideas: representations that are not directly observed, but are conceivable based on previous experiences. On her canvases, they gain the right to exist, a real life. She creates sketches in advance and selects a color palette. But on the canvas, the characters twist, wriggle, flow, and float toward their own state of ‘being.’ Within the context of the canvas, they are fully living, perceivable creatures.

 

Meyer’s work is situated in a mindset where humans (artists as well as viewers) share an environment with countless other life forms. The lives depicted in her paintings are not separate, but always relate to each other. They transform in and through each other, nourishing each other. Often, they share similar motifs; sometimes subjects that were secondary in one painting become central in the next. Thus, her visual language organically grows into a universe, and all her beings live in symbiosis.

 

Recently, more voices have been raised for humans to turn their gaze toward the world around them, to acknowledge that we don’t know everything, to question established patterns, and to gravitate to a more horizontal way of thinking. In 2016, philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term ‘Symbiocene’ as a possible successor to the Anthropocene, the era we now live in and in which the human impact on Earth has proven disastrous. According to him, an era where all life forms live in symbiosis is the only hopeful evolution. In his book Entangled Life (2020), Merlin Sheldrake states that all life underground is interconnected through networks of mycorrhizae and mycelium. It’s a good example of something that has been scientifically studied for decades but is still not widely known. The book suggests a broader shift in considering visible and invisible organisms, and by extension, the relationship between humans and nature.

 

Meyer’s interest in less visible or speculative life forms also leads her to investigate underwater species. Seaweed and algae are ideal matter for speculative thinking: they are ancient plants with many mysteries. They have their own ecosystem and are responsible for about half of all oxygen production. Their poetic shapes, underwater or washed ashore, are strange, even frightening, to many. They visibly inspire her painted characters, as well as her collaboration with The Platform for Algae Diplomacy, initiated by Filip Van Dingenen. The platform focuses on algae from artistic, ecological, political, and economic perspectives, organizing cross-pollinations between exhibitions, debates, and research. Meyer developed a ceremonial buffet, allowing viewers to experience algae in a broad sensory manner. Algae and seaweed are ingredients to her recipes and also to the experimental glaze for the serving dishes. For this project, she learned to work with clay, thus expanding her practice from painting to ceramics. Sand, which has accidentally been harvested along with the (dead) algae, clings to the glaze, giving the dishes a textural experience.

 

Cooking and sharing meals is an important part of Meyer’s life, so it was a natural step to incorporate this into her work. Taste and touch can also be ways of gathering knowledge. The seaweed footbaths, offered at the buffet, are another example. The ceremonial buffet as a whole creates a scenario for communication and the exchange of knowledge through shared experience. For each edition, Meyer creates new serving bowls and recipes. Algae may provide an ecological answer to eating habits that are harmful for the planet, Therefore, experiments with consuming them (for example as food) becomes a valuable conversation topic, as well as a means of sharing existing knowledge.

 

Food sets in motion a bodily transformation process. It reacts with certain substances and alters in certain organs. Digestion is just one of the countless organic processes that follow and complement each other within and among living organisms. During the recent Tangente Festival in Sankt Pölten, Austria, Meyer, together with Marion Aeby, fermented plants found in the riverbeds and used them to make bread. A way to taste the landscape, but also to investigate organic processes that can inform our basic food; or even to learn through experimentation how all life is fluid, transformative, and interconnected. Food expert and activist Sandor Ellix Katz describes fermentation as a metaphor for symbiotic relationships and mutual co-existence, and as a possible renewed connection between humans and the natural world (through food, among other things).

 

‘A vast matrix of intertwining life-forms at different scales, interacting, mutually coexisting and feeding off one another, in ways we are just beginning to recognize.’

(Sandor Ellix Katz, Fermentation as Metaphor, 2020)

 

 

As a result of her research into fermentation, Meyer’s interest has recently shifted towards microbiota – the collective term for bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that prove vital for living bodies (including the human body). From the earthly plant world, to mysterious life forms underwater, and to barely perceivable and little-known organisms within our bodies: her artistic research always branches out into poetic interpretations of how living creatures interact, merge, and evolve with one another; in short, it becomes a reflection on life itself.

 

 

Tamara Beheydt