Hélène Planquelle - Hold

Hélène Planquelle’s work explores the delicate balance that unites pleasure and suffering in our relationship to the Other, from both an individual and collective perspective, through recurring themes such as affective dependence, attachment, vulnerability, acceptance and rejection, violence, and power dynamics.

Conceptual by nature, though very realistic, her work thus draws on a rich field of philosophical and scientific references across ethics and social sciences, including attachment theories, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary psychology. But Planquelle’s approach is above all rooted in the ethical thought of the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, who notably employed the concept of "original violence" to describe our relation to the Other. The Other, in the vulnerability revealed by the nakedness of his or her "face," seems to command us with the primoridial imperative: "you shall not kill," thus exerting an originary constraint on our otherwise sovereign existence.

A fervent advocate of figuration, Planquelle’s work is anchored in humanity’s ancestral fascination with narrative. Art is not so much an answer as a particular way of posing questions, and her works unfold in ambiguity, duality, and the plurality of meanings.

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