Hélène Planquelle - Hold

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

Conceptual by nature, though highly realistic, her work draws from a rich soil of philosophical and scientific references across fields ranging from ethics to social sciences, including theories of attachment, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary psychology. But Planquelle’s approach is above all rooted in the ethical thought of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, 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 their “face,” seems to command us with the primary imperative: “you shall not kill,” thereby exerting an original constraint on our existence beyond which it would otherwise be sovereign.

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

www.heleneplanquelle.com
https://www.instagram.com/heleneplanquelle/