Helena Almeida
June 6 – August 10, 2003

Helena Almeida, one of Portugal's leading artists, places herself as her own model in the center of her work. In her performative scenarios she deals with the precarious space of representation by exploring the limits of the image by means of photography, painting, drawing, object art and language. She studies the subtle transitions from object to its depiction, from the illusionary space of photography to painterly surface.

Helena Almeida has coined the notion of the "inhabited" for her subtle exploration of the relationship between woman and image. She speaks of "inhabited canvas", "inhabited painting", "inhabited drawing". The "picture" into whose complex space the artist inscribes herself becomes here a seemingly indispensable place for women. It is a space "inhabited" by women in an imaginary sense, but it also represents a space that is one of suppression, of closure from which the woman wishes to escape.

Almeida's beginnings lie in painting, which led her to a self-referential study of the image in painting. She began to critically examine its material components such as the canvas, the wedged frame, paint and at the same time to analyze its structural (modern) function, namely of serving as a "window to the world". This prompted here to expand this image in a sculptural sense, to extend it into the surrounding space and ultimately to implement it in photography in various performative scenarios as in her most recent works.

With greatest subtle differentiation, the line of a photographed thread, which also throws a shadow in the picture, becomes transformed into a line on the surface of the picture. It is staged as if the artist who is present in the photograph had drawn this line from the inside to the outside (Desenho Habitado / Inhabited Drawing, 1975). The realities of the (photographic) illusionary space and those of the actual surface, the medium of the picture and its material, collide, creating a contradiction that assumes the form of a mysterious, ineluctable conflation. The blue paint that Almeida applies to the surface of a photograph to cover her face has a similar effect. Here the artist both stresses and denies her presence (Pintura Habitada / Bewohnte Malerei, 1976).

In the 1980´s Almeida began expanding her body by means of mise-en-scènes using black fabric and the dimensions of photographs to monumentalize it. This took place in an increasingly obscure space in which the contrast between surface and depth was subject to critical scrutiny. (Negro Exterior / Black Exterior,  1981, Espaço Espesso / Dense Space, 1982).

In her most recent works, which are also in large formats, Almeida is again and again interested in exploring different aspects of her basic theme. Dentro de mim (Within Myself) represents a literal reflection of the surrounding (studio) space. The series shows variations on the bare feet and lower legs of the artist who is posing for the camera lying or standing on one foot, while small square mirrors are attached to her foot soles. These mirrors capture the surrounding room in small fragments and in the process they seem to obliterate the corporeal reality of the foot.

The following observations apply for all of Almeida's works. The body becomes implicated within the context of inside and outside, of the depiction, the non-specific space, the form of painting and drawing and its material. The artist's body stagings are structured like a poetic text. Their theme is ambiguous, leaving everything open. Both rhythmically and formally they remain contradictory, they are sensuous, allusive and full of subtle wit that plays with the surface or the shadow.

The exhibition will present a selection of the Helena Almeida's comprehensive oeuvre spanning a period from the 1970´s to the present day.

Helena Almeida was born in Lisbon in 1934. She lives and works in Lisbon.