The Elephant Woman<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The underlying themes in Colombian-born Montr\u00e9al artist Helena Martin Franco\u2019s work are identity and alterity, explored via the body and the creation of autofictions. Through various projects in diverse media featuring fictional protagonists (C\u0153ur D\u00e9phas\u00e9, Fritta Caro, the elephant woman) described as \u201cidentity collages,\u201d Martin Franco makes visible the porosity of borders among cultural, national, and gender identities. Exemplary of this approach are the watercolours from \u00c9tude pour habiller une femme \u00e9l\u00e9phant (entre le c\u0153ur et la trompe)<\/em>,based around a character inspired by the expression \u201ctener el moco en el suelo<\/em>\u201d (literally, with its trunk to the ground). By embodying intimist subjects, the elephant woman opens the way to excavating gender archetypes inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition and consolidated by anachronistic narrative models (movies, soap operas, love songs, advertising) that foster women\u2019s sense of guilt and conformity. Martin Franco appropriates these models, which are popular in her country of birth, making her bedroom into a studio for creating other, often reconstructed, identities. Echoing the feminist slogan \u201cThe personal is political,\u201d this series draws attention to life in a couple, understood as a microstructure in which power dynamics are played out, thus illustrating the permeability of the public and private spheres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Fronti\u00e8res<\/em>, Martin Franco pursues a similar theme by blurring the lines defining gender identity. In a rejection of all extremes, the watercolours in this series, with their diffused contours, present the body as a territory constantly redefined, in particular, by religious and institutional norms. Some of her works (including La plan\u00e8te des seins<\/em>, 2011) were withdrawn from a Maison de la culture de Montr\u00e9al because they apparently offended the sensibilities of the school-age public and the area\u2019s cultural communities. If this censorship offers an invitation to reflect on \u201cthe policy of Montreal cultural institutions with regard to nudity in art,\u201d it is, in Martin Franco\u2019s view, indicative of a \u201cfear of nudity, of women\u2019s sovereignty over their bodies, and of autonomous gestures by women artists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by K\u00e4the Roth<\/p>\n\n\n\n