Helena Goñi

The importance of the body-object-environment relationship is a crucial aspect in Helena Goñi’s artistic investigation, which ranges between experiential and performative photography, video, and performance. Goñi photographed some acquaintances while living in New York using her 35 mm camera to document everything she saw as part of her investigation into the collective imagination. She photographed Lynn and Caleb in their respective homes, both color photographs included in this exhibition, and explored aspects of endurance, engagement, fetishization of the body, and the representation of the human figure in sculptural form. In Lynn Holding Books, Goñi captured Lynn holding books flat on her back while kneeling on a soft surface in an interior domestic space. Although the figure’s head is cropped out of the picture frame, Goñi focuses instead on the architecture of the body and its endurance with literal printed weight in the form of books. At the core, Lynn’s body functions as a structure of support and echoes the furniture in the background supporting the various plantings, thus transforming the depiction of the body into a living corporeal space.