Hélène Planquelle - Hold

The work of Hélène Planquelle explores the delicate balance that unites pleasure and suffering in our relationship with the other, from both the individual and collective perspectives, through recurring themes such as emotional dependency, attachment, vulnerability, acceptance and rejection, violence, and power dynamics.

Conceptual by nature, though very realistic, her work draws on a rich bed of philosophical and scientific references in fields ranging from ethics to social sciences, including attachment theories, psychoanalysis and evolutionary psychology. But Hélène Planquelle's approach is above all rooted in the ethical thought of the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, who notably employed the concept of originary violence to describe our relation to the other. The Other, in the vulnerability revealed by the nakedness of the 'face', seems to command the first imperative: "you shall not kill", thereby exerting originary constraint on our sovereign existence.

A fervent advocate of figuration, Planquelle's work is rooted in humanity's ancestral fascination with storytelling. Art, not so much a solution as a way of posing questions, her works unfold in ambiguity, duality, and plurality of meanings.

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