natalka husar’s and katja kessin’s...
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ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
NATALKA HUSAR’S AND KATJA KESSIN’S PANDORA’S BOXES
Adeline Paradis-Hautcoeur In this era of virtual boom, the arrival of new technologies like videos and Internet give artists new
possibilities in which they can express themselves: theatre can be now performed by online
transmission and Facebook can be viewed as an artistic database.1 In this context, the way artists
legitimate their use of painting, an old artistic medium, is interesting. Thus, this exhibition presents two
painters, Natalka Husar (b. 1951) and Katja MacLeod Kessin (1959-2006) that use figuration in a very
personal matter as testimonies of national trauma connected to their own family histories. Even if
Husar was born in the United States, she was aware of Ukraine’s harsh social and political situation
through her parents. Indeed, she grew up in a Ukrainian family who emigrated to the United States in
1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War. She then moved to Toronto as a young adult in 1973.2
Katja MacLeod Kessin (1959-2006) was born in Hamburg, Germany and moved to Montreal in her
early twenties.3 Like most Germans, her family was deeply involved in and affected by the Second
World War. The paintings of Natalka Husar and Katja MacLeod Kessin are presented in this virtual
exhibition as Pandora’s boxes. In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman created out of clay
by Zeus in order to get revenge on Prometheus for his theft of fire. This Greek goddess had beauty as
well as curiosity. Zeus left Pandora a pretty box without revealing its contains, but with the firm
recommendation to not open it under any circumstances, and then he sent Pandora to Prometheus to be
his wife. After Prometheus’s refusal, Pandora married his brother and when her situation was secured
by her marriage, she could not resist the temptation of opening the box. In what she thought would only
be a glimpse, she let out sorrows that were spread all over the world.4 In the same way as Pandora’s
nice box contained all the worst things, both artists’ nice colours, patterns and textures shed light on
Ukrainian and German contemporary taboos. Because Husar's double-citizenship is at the core of what
defines her identity, her iconography refers to images from her personal life, her family history and her
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
displacement as part of an emigrated community.5 Kessin’s canvases in their formal, almost decorative
aspects also offers a pretty way to present disturbing truths.6 Although she was too young to have lived
in the Third Reich, as a German, she could still feel the weight of these dark times. Hence, her imagery
is linked to the hidden secrets of German families, which she decided to confront rather than hide.7
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
Natalka Husar
Pandora’s Parcel to Ukraine
1993
224 x 274 cm
Oil on linen
From the series Black Sea Blue
National Gallery of Canada
http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=6076&title=Read+Between+the+Lines&artist=Natalka+Husar&link_id=1624
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
In her journey to Ukraine in 1992, Natalka Husar found a country torn between the attraction of the
West and a Soviet legacy.8 Pandora’s Parcel to Ukraine depicts the absurdity of the Western
stereotypes about Ukraine. Like Gustave Courbet did in his Atelier (1855), the artist represents the
characters, real and fictionalized, of Ukraine's society.9 Whereas Courbet suggests the hopes of a future
generation with the picturing of two boys, Husar’s ghostly young girls are indicative of the uncertainty
of the next generation. Ukrainian immigrants to North America, away from this harsh reality, try to
help their relatives by sending useless parcels, which occupy the front right side of this painting.
However, chocolate boxes will not help in the country’s reconstruction. Insufficient aid and
inappropriate gifts from the West mock the destitute social and economic state of to-day's Ukraine.
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
Natalka Husar
Odessa’s Tears
1995
224 x 137 cm
Oil on linen
From the series Black Sea Blue
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
Husar’s 1995 painting Odessa’s Tears is constructed around a poignant narrative detail. Inside a dark
circle, the viewer can distinguish a pram falling down huge steps, a scene inspired by Sergeï
Eisenstein’s 1925 movie, Battleship Potemkin. These stairs which are considered a formal entrance
into the city from the sea are the best known symbol of Odessa. The crying baby in the pram plunges
into the painting, its horrifying movement reinforced by the way the sheets are disposed below, as if
melding the shape of the steps and the upside down body of the crying women who we assume to be
the child's mother. The accumulation of drapery guides our attention to different objects such as
children shoes, Ukrainian dolls, rotten cucumbers and cherry wine.10 The bright colours and textures of
the fabric evoke a luxurious life, but the tragic scene reveal something else: Mother Ukraine's
nightmarish dream and the catastrophic reality of a child whose destiny is uncertain.
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
Katja MacLeod Kessin
Don’t you see that everything’s in perfect order?
1990
121.9 x 147.3 cm
Acrylic on canvas
http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=7932&title=Don%27t+you+see+that+everything%27s+in+perfect+order%3F&artist=Kessin,+Katja&link_id=1663
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
In this painting, an old blind woman sits at a kitchen table and shows the viewer a neat sewing box
while everything around her is complete chaos. A fallen chair and lamp, a scrapbook of Hitler’s
pictures, an apple core, and army boots are scattered on the ground. The skin of a peeled potato on the
table swirls into the wood grain of the floor, making the definition of space unclear. On the table,
spilled red wine flows in two directions towards a big kitchen knife and the sewing box, which contains
a heart-shaped pincushion: the women’s heart seems to be bleeding. The woman, a composite of
Kessin’s mother, her grandmother’s and herself appears to be the guardian of the family's secrets.11
After the war, generations of women desperately have tried to keep their sewing boxes in order with a
cushion of love despite the fact that family secrets are creating chaos everywhere. Pandora’s wish to
contain troubles, afflictions and miseries are in vain.
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
Katja MacLeod Kessin
Baking Little Men
1991
121.9 x 147.3 cm
Acrylic on canvas
http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=7932&title=Don%27t+you+see+that+everything%27s+in+perfect+order%3F&artist=Kessin,+Katja&link_id=1663
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
Baking Little Men also depicts a kitchen. Here the oven door is open, and a plate with cookies either
waits to be baked or eaten. The composition dominated by the colour red, and the title of the painting
refers to the to the crematory ovens of the concentration camps where Jews were murdered in the
Holocaust. The reference to death is also represented by the skulls printed on the kitchen rag.12 Kessin
inserts Third Reich imagery into the daily objects of a domestic space to suggest that German families
still have not dealt with the atrocities of the Second World War and Holocaust which are so much a
part of their legacy that their homes are haunted by this history.13
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
NOTES 1 Falk Richter’s Dieu est un DJ is performed by two actors, one in Quebec, the other in Switzerland; the action is simultaneously broadcasted in both countries. Après Faceb00k is a summer 2012 project by the artists Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier and Serge-Olivier Rondeau. Accessed December 17, 2012 http://www.montheatre.qc.ca/archives/15-autres/2012/dieudj.html. 2 Carol Podedworny, “Real Life Romance,” Black Sea Blue: Natalka Husar Paintings (Regina: The Rosemont Art Gallery Society Inc., 1995) 15. 3 Katja MacLeod Kessin, To Lend the Dead a Voice: Second-Generation German Visual Art, P.h.D. dissertation (Montreal: Concordia University, 2003) 120. 4 “Pandore,” Encyclopedia Universalis, accessed December 17, 2012 http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/pandore/. 5 Shirley Madill, “Husar’s Masquerade,” Natalka Husar – Blond with Dark Roots (Hamilton: The Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2001) 11. 6 David Elliott, “Home Fires: an appreciation of Katja MacLeod Kessin’s narrative paintings,” Katja MacLeod Kessin (Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007) 13. 7 Elliott, 13. 8 Podedworny, 17. 9 Loren Lerner, “Natalka Husar,” Memories and Testimonies (Montreal: Concordia University, 2002) 65. 10 Lerner, 63. 11 Elliott, 14. 12 Loren Lerner, “Performing Katja,” Katja MacLeod Kessin (Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007) 32. 13 Kessin, 121.
ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012
BIBLIOGRAPHY Elliott, David. “Home Fires: An Appreciation of Katja MacLeod Kessin’s Narrative Paintings.” Katja
MacLeod Kessin. Exhibition catalogue. 17 October – 16 November 2007. FOFA Gallery. Concordia University. Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007. 9-17.
Lerner, Loren. “Natalka Husar.” Memories and Testimonies. Exhibition catalogue. 9 April – 18 May
2002. Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery. Montreal: Concordia University, 2002. 62-67. Lerner, Loren. “Performing Katja.” Katja MacLeod Kessin. Exhibition catalogue. 17 October – 16
November 2007. FOFA Gallery. Concordia University. Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007. 29-38.
MacLeod Kessin, Katja. To Lend the Dead a Voice: Second-Generation German Visual Art. P.h.D.
dissertation. Montreal: Concordia University, 2003. Madill, Shirley. “Husar’s Masquerade.” Natalka Husar – Blond with Dark Roots. Exhibition catalogue.
14 February – 7 April 2002. Hamilton: The Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2001. 11-13. “Pandore.” Encyclopedia Universalis. Accessed December 17, 2012.
http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/pandore/. Podedworny, Carol. “Real Life Romance.” Black Sea Blue: Natalka Husar Paintings. Exhibition
catalogue. 7 June – 8 July 1995. Regina: The Rosemont Art Gallery Society Inc., 1995. 12-23.
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