Small Ophelias and Icebergs

Written by Martha Werneck

[translated by Cristiane Busato Smith]

 

 

The sound of silence appears when all we can find in hope is a thread of life ready to rupture.

 

The paintings in the series Pequenas Ofélias e Icebergs (Small Ophelias and Icebergs) merge two concept-images: the female body portrayed by me and the representation of icebergs, related to what constitutes the unconscious and the conscious of the individual. These images, in conjunction, tell us about what is visible as opposed to what is submerged and deep. In this series, a result from my research on the representation of the female body and self-image, I also depicted female artists from my circle of friends, portrayed with personal characteristics amalgamated with the representation of Ophelia. The series dialogues with taboo themes such as death and suicide, and points to the possibility of redemption through the paths of sublimation through female artistic making.

 

In 2016, I became aware of the recurrent traits of the Shakespearean character Ophelia in my paintings, during an exercise focused on small studies. I was around 15 years old when I came into contact with the character. I was caught up in a sort of double colonization of the image that, in turn, caused a deviation from its primordial meaning. Before reading Hamlet, I had seen the image of Ophelia represented in Ophelia (1851-1852), the famous painting by the Pre-Raphaelite Millais. This painting featured in a 1986 American film in which the main character was a young woman with artistic gifts. She rebelled against the prevailing social norms and broke taboos in the name of unrequited love, with a happy outcome for the couple. It is important to emphasize that, in this reconfiguration, the protagonist of the film gives Ophelia a way out other than death. Based on this self-analysis, after delving deeper into the character through studies of literature and image, with authors such as Cristiane Busato Smith and theorists such as Didi Huberman, who, through the historian Warburg, brings us the notion of the survival of the image, I saw in Ophelia a powerful dubiety to be explored in contemporary figurative painting. If, on the one hand, she is a muse for those who see her as fragile and weak, affected by madness, passion and whose abandonment is part of giving up in the face of an inevitable destiny, on the other hand, she is viewed as yet another victim of patriarchy.

 

I see Ofelia as a catalyst in the quest to become a woman, alluded to by feminist Simone de Beauvoir. I try to portray myself and other women with whom I have affinity and contact with as Ophelias. We all understand ourselves as reborn from many symbolic deaths throughout our lives. We are 21st century women century asking ourselves: in order not to have the same end as Hamlet’s Ophelia, how can we overcome these imposed structures and pursue – or challenge – our own condition despite society’s mystification about what it means to be a woman? How can we identify and reaffirm our individuality and seek new values for a female collective in our society?

 

By portraying characters like Ophelia, the meaning of these works permeates the resistance and effort of those who, faced with an oppressive society, do not allow their potential as agents of history to succumb. The reference to Shakespeare’s character addresses the concept of melancholy as a drive towards self-discovery, towards rebirth through symbolic suicide and death, which, in turn, furthers the question of what it means to be a woman in individual and collective spheres. In my paintings, I try to harmonize form and semantic content in a poetic way, producing and enabling new references for surviving Ophelias, for reborn Ophelias. Thus, I address issues that involve feminism as a field of political activity for women, as well as the expression of what it means to be and be in this role of self-definition and of defining the identity of the feminine. As long as there is patriarchy, Ophelia’s image will be relevant to all of us.

 

The Ophelias represented here are small parts of this larger character who seeks in death through water – an essentially feminine and renewing element – the solution to her anguish.

 

Little Ophelias are portraits of real women, represented with attributes that connect them to what they do in life, most of them also artists. These are women who touch us because of their power, which is often muffled by the context to which we, Brazilians and Latin Americans, are subject to daily through a structuring machismo and policies that undermine art and cultural expression.

 

The following paintings are accompanied by poetic texts related to each model, performed while building each painting.

 

 

Ana Clara is an Ophelia who doesn’t want to get married. She wears a glove on her hand that doesn’t fit a ring… The same glove is materialized in the painting Save the Bird, already with its pair (painting shown later).

 

The bride in the painting, graduated in 2017, has her graduation year number printed on a bouquet of brushes. She floats in an iceberg dress, bare feet, which must feel every grain of the way. This is how the artist is built.

 

 

Ophelia, the photographer, holds her work instrument close to her, like someone who protects the meaning found in life, and does not allow it to be taken away from her.

 

The outstretched arm, intrusive, masculine, tries to obstruct her path, but despite her taciturn expression, Ophelia faces the unknown.

 

 

Ophelia, submerged. The bird, rescued.

 

In drowning, the disappearance of the conscious in favor of diving into oneself, into the unknown. A soft and borderline contrast between life and death, also revealed by the greenish and pinkish tones.

 

In rescue, the rehearsal of his own search for integrity or, at least, of his little freedom of thought.

 

On the gloves, which figure between painting and non-painting, the projection of Ophelia’s drowning hands…

 

During the 2020/2021 quarantine, the series continued and involved critical issues regarding the politics for handling the pandemic in Brazil. Historian Rosenfeld mentions that Millais was known for representing women with vacant eyes, as if they were absent from their bodies, distant, in a trance. These images show women in emotional states that reveal absence, abandonment, in psychological states in which they are under duress. Not being present would then be a response to complex emotions that are difficult to deal with. This position of impasse, astonishment, abandonment, self-silence, I noticed prevailing among many of the representations that I have been undertaking.

 

When I finished my first work at that time of the pandemic, I wrote in an Instagram post:

 

In this crossing, the endings are long, slow and the beginnings painful… For a rebirth, we need to be willing to ^brave(?) the currents.

 

This work, a self-portrait with procedure gloves, is accompanied by a text that emphasizes its symbolic elements such as the headphones, the moon, that appears inside the open gap in the glacier, the dandelion flower, symbolizing the virus that spreads through the air, the gloved hand clutching a bouquet that would not survive the icy, blue-green, hospital environment.

 

Here is the text, written in September 2020:

 

Submerged in a time that seems static, isolated, we grasp what life is, what remains, the small everyday happiness, so as not to drown in the pain and coldness that surround us.
The outside world sends news
We listen to the future.
The virus, like dandelions, spreads and takes revenge, out of control.
We float and wait for a New Moon to cross us and be reborn.
Put on your masks, put on your gloves.
We will survive the pain of irreparable losses, mismanagement, and lack of love, those who snow the macabre, in death motorcades, announcing fascism.

 

 

 

A second work in the series, exhibited in 2019 at Galeria Mônica Filgueiras with the title Ofélia Dourada – Redenção, was the last painting I did before the outbreak of the pandemic. It is a self-portrait.

 

In it, the drowned woman submerges and at the same time seems to ascend to the heavens. There is fog and clouds. Floating feet lead us to think of an ascension.

 

When we reached thirty thousand deaths from COVID in Brazil, an emblematic number because there are records of a previous speech by our president mentioning such a number and deaths, I decided to paint a drapery over the self-portrait. It features the numeral thirty thousand embroidered in Roman numerals. The needle hangs, as if she hadn’t finished her embroidery.

 

It was just the beginning of so many deaths.

 

The painting received a new name: Thirty thousand in her shrouds.

 

 

 

 

 

In The game of death, Remmie Roxx appears as Ophelia. The photo shoot I did with my gamer friend, who has a channel on the Twitch platform, inspired me to carry out a work that spoke of death in the game in reference to deaths during the pandemic and the way in which the health crisis was treated: in false dispute between preserving lives and keeping the country’s economy running.

 

I started the composition thinking about working the game’s virtual universe together with the player’s image. To compose the game’s screen, I used a painting by Michelangelo at the bottom of the work as a reference, which depicts demons and beasts. I digitally worked the negative from this image and combined it with screenshots of the game lineage2 interface, the object of my doctoral studies.

 

A female figure, representing the player’s avatar, is dressed in oppressive 19th century clothes that also signal self-punishment. The conical hat, also called capirote, is today the symbol of the Catholic penitent and its use is carried out by members of a Spanish confraternity. Penitents wear the hat so that attention is directed to God when they repent.

 

In the early 20th century, this type of hat was appropriated by the American extremist Ku Klux Klan movement, composed of white supremacists and anti-Catholics. At work, the hat takes on a dual meaning. Who would be the player? A repentant penitent, or a far-right, anti-vaccine science denier?

 

In the middle of the composition, a winged skeleton carries a scythe on which the inscriptions Bolsonaro 200,000 appear. That was the death toll when the work was finished.

 

The game’s interface remains out of the picture, showing the energy level of the player who, looking lost, abandons the control of the gamepad and is submerged by a wreath of flowers.

 

 

 

 

References

 

DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. A imagem sobrevivente: história da arte e tempo dos fantasmas segundo Aby Warburg. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto, 2013.

 

ROSENFELD, Jason. John Everett Millais. Londres: Ed. Phaidon Press limited, 2012.

 

SMITH, Cristiane Busato. Ofélia e a Arte. Curitiba: Kotter Editorial, 2022.

 

YOUNG, Alan R. Hamlet and the Visual Arts, 1709-1900. Newark: University of Delaware Press e London: Associated University Press. EUA: Rodesmont Publiching & Printing Corp., 2002.