Heidi Jensen at Ball State University

In Claude Cahun’s monologue “Helen the Rebel”, the narrative of Helen of Troy is reimagined and retold. Rather than existing as a passive object of desire, Cahun’s Helen collaborates with her husband Menelaus to orchestrate the Trojan War. Her renowned beauty is the result of a training process. Helen relates instructions from Menelaus on how to become beautiful: “. . . sit comfortably in a darkened room and think of nothing. Just that, every day, for a few minutes – gradually and indefinitely increasing the time”. The work in this exhibition casts an oblique eye at subjects homely and humble, extravagant and decorative, and to the biological forces that create transformation in organic life forms.

A thread running throughout my work is confusion of the animate and inanimate, an approach to form leading back to the Surrealists. Brushes, the subjects of many of these drawings, are humble objects that carry suggestions of utility and service. They are tools, used to clear away unwanted matter and ward off compromising, unruly elements. These anthropomorphic forms hover between the male and female, they contain tongue-in-cheek references to physical anatomy. They act without the guidance of a hand, like the endlessly toiling, enchanted marching brooms in Disney’s Fantasia. Drawn with toilet brushes and dusters in mind, these brushes remain unrepentantly bristly, hairy and lowly, while ensnared or beset by decorative ruffles. The drawings are made on rough, dyed paper with gouache, a medium chosen for its flat, opaque qualities. Graphic line is employed to invoke subtle humor and comics.