Artists' Fellowship - 1988
Performance Art/Multidisciplinary Work
Artist Statement:
I have devoted this year by necessity to "INQUIRY: The Ttrial of The Sands of Time," because of an injustice where my work was literally thrown out by a storage company (524 sand "sacs" that came out of a performance mode.) I had to bring this matter to court because a facsimile was attempted. However, I lost the case and am doing performance around this issue: "replaced" art, ecological statement as art form and the devaluing of these modes by society. My work did change, because I was able to speak up, thanks to the fellowship.
More about the Artist:
In the 1970’s, Helčne Aylon’s process paintings, designed to change over
time, were about the body. With the “Breakings,” she saw the body as
visceral rather than a combination of sexual parts. This work was shown at
MIT, Betty Parsons Gallery, Susan Caldwell Gallery and programmed into the
Whitney Museum’s “American Century” show, 2000.
In the 80’s the work was about the Earth. Aylon united women from warring
nations, such as Arabic and Jewish women in 1981 with “Stone Carrying
Ceremonial” (Artist’s Space, 1994). Video footage from 1985 of two seed sacs
floating down the rivers of Japan en route to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
shown on the SONY Jumbotron in Times Square (1995) sponsored by NYFA and
NYSCA. She drove an “Earth Ambulance” across the country stopping at
military S.A.C. sites to “rescue” the Earth before it would get contaminated
(shown at Creative Time, 1992). Women met her at each site and wrote their
dreams and nightmares on their own pillowcases (later knotted together and
shown as “Bridge of Knots” at the Berkeley, Knoxville, and Harn Art
Museums). They then shoveled the earth into these pillowcases and brought
them to the United Nations. Recently, “The Earth Ambulance” has been
acquired as a permanent installation at the new Hudson Valley Center for
Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY.
In the 90’s, Aylon attempted to “rescue” G-d from ungodly projections with
“The G-d Project” for which she was a NYFA Sponsored Artist. Now in 2003,
Aylon is embarking on a “Digital Liberation of G-d,” which will be a digital
Beit Midrash (House of Commentary) as it were. Sponsored by the Swig
Foundation, it will originate in the newly built San Francisco Jewish
Community Center, curated by Peter Samis of SF MoMA, and will be accessible
to other institutions in the future, inviting dialogue world-over. She is
also working on small text works using a magnifier lens to highlight passages
in the Sacred Text, small headboards with texts, and continuing her process
drawings/paintings.
Helčne Aylon was raised in Brooklyn and became the wife of an Orthodox rabbi
while still in her teens. When she was 31, her husband died. Aylon continued
to study with Ad Reinhardt who recognized the metamorphosis of his student.
The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, which awarded her their 2002
Achievement Award for Visual Arts, has stated, “Helčne Aylon’s clairvoyant
work has paralleled the issues of the times and the history of the Women’s
Movement. It defies and transcends any stereotypes.” Although she did not
seek representation after the death of her dealer, Betty Parsons, she is now
open to representation by a dealer who believes in her work. The plan is for
a retrospective and a catalogue/book that will make the connections between
the work of the 70’s (the Body), the 80’s (the Earth), and the 90’s
(“G-d”). She is available for lectures and shows.
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