Make three wishes
Digital photographies 2004, 2005
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
THE SYMBOLIC CONDITION OF THE OBJECT IN HELENA MARTIN’S
PHOTOGRAPHIC SERIES “FAITES TROIS SOUHAITS”
by Jorge Pantaleon
Although apparently insignificant on first sight, the objects of Helena Martin’s photographs possess a life and struggle for themselves. The temporality of their existence is attached to the nobility and ignobility of the material with which they are fabricated and sold. We should not be deterministic about the pedigree of these things. We know that the degree of dignity that the object can acquire is above all else a consequence of the destiny we give them.
By assembling them with great audacity to achieve incisive results, Helena Martin plays with the destiny of these vestiges of objects - the raison d’être of the Dollarama and the paradigm of instantaneous consumption. These objects are paradoxically the most tangible witness to our daily life - ubiquitous and disposable. In appearance they are genetically incompatible with great pretensions, be those ideas, emotions or beliefs. As such, they attain with great difficulty the status of sacred objects.
In this apparent impossibility, we find the key to the game to which the artist invites us. Uncomfortable to the dogmatic eyes, figures and profane materials have invaded the niches created to house saints, virgins and duly sanctioned marriages. We can risk that they have desecrated a space that is prohibited to them. But no, it is just an optical illusion. This visual discomfort is a symptom of our perceptual problem that the artist is obliging us to correct, in consequence sorcery is revealed: objects as such are neither sacred nor profane and even less so ad eternum.
All objects depend on routine exercises of consecration to become noble, in this sense there is nothing more pertinent to be reminded of than the fact that plastic and silicone are the materials of the modern world with the greatest quantity of worshippers. Wealth in this context is a counterfeit coin. Good fortune, dolls of happiness and beauty, are bodies filled with ephemeral plastic. The kitsch of illusionistic brilliance and strident colours must share the scene with the realism of passport photos, the latter itself plastified. This is another fetish desire, a sacred product of our modernity, which promises identity and well being (particularly when the passport is from a wealthy country). This is the eternal drama of desire expressing itself through simulation by means of plastic.
On this occasion the sacred and profane present themselves as mutually necessary. The objects and desires operate concurrently to achieve glorification. These scenes provocatively demonstrate that thankfully this competition does not have a fixed winner.
Montreal, 2005
Jorge Pantaleon is adjunct professor in the Anthropology Department at the l’Université de Montréal. His research and teaching focuses on social and cultural issues facing contemporary Latin America, the cultural economy and the anthropology of development.