The theses and postulates of the artist Helena Vinent (Barcelona, 1988) can be totally surprising and disruptive for people who can consider themselves ‘complete’ from the point of view of our physical and intellectual capabilities. For Vinent, what we believe to be our vital future in an ordinary world turns out to be nothing more than the sum of some privileges that we possess by virtue of belonging to the majority group of bodies.
Faced with these, according to the artist, a follower of the theory queer crip, Diverse people are located, with varied and non-normative bodies, which Vinent describes as “minorities discriminated against and treated as inferior and infantilized beings, incapable of taking care of themselves.” Faced with this vision, which she claims is widespread, she puts what she calls “activism” disc”.
It is a militancy that denounces what it calls “ableism” as a kind of supremacism on the part of a majority with normative bodies, and that vindicates, on the other hand, diverse people as subjects of joy and pleasure in the face of the ableist vision. , which identifies them with pain, helplessness and suffering.
“Paralympic athletes are frequently talked about and it is said that they overcome barriers,” says Vinent and then offers his point of view on these comments: “It is obvious that the barriers that athletes and all people have to overcome disc, They are those imposed by ableist power, which refuses to adapt its world for us.”
Against prostheses
Helena Vinent, petite and thin, nervous and talkative, is a deaf artist. He explains that he understands us by reading our lips, but that his brain would live in silence if it were not for the headphones he uses and that, in any case, he assures, they do not allow him to understand what others say to him. She works as a translator for herself: she reads lips and sends the words to the brain, which processes them as if it heard them.
Given that he is having a normal conversation, it is clear that this process is trained until it is almost automatic. In fact, it is the artist herself who reveals, to the surprise of this journalist, that she is not able to understand our words. And hence his reflection: “I can read your lips and follow a conversation, but instead of teaching you to speak through signs, they force me to wear a prosthesis that underlines my supposed inferiority.”
“After school I started studying anthropology, but due to my deafness it was impossible for me to follow the classes, so I looked for another career where I could make use of my manual and creative skills and I ended up in Fine Arts,” reveals Vinent, who adds that “activism disc It is the leitmotiv that threads his entire career.
The creator accompanies us towards the main entrance of Accidenthis new and impressive installation, which is exhibited in Espai 13 of the Fundació Miró, a pioneering space in the commitment to emerging talents of conceptual art in the Spanish State. Last spring, Vinent exhibited at La Casa Encendida in Madrid The prosthesis that directed the organ against itselfan installation that denounced prosthetics as an imposition of the system.
“Through this exhibition I make a personal and political reading of prostheses, which function as instruments that adapt the body to a standard regulation governed by neoliberal and ableist logic, which dictates which bodies are valid, effective and functional for capitalism versus to those who are not”, can be read on their Instagram page in this regard.
Regulatory bodies before the mirror of pride
“Accident It is a completely new work that Helena has made for the cycle We will accompany you when it is faci de nit (We will accompany each other when it gets dark), which is based on the interdependence between people, the idea that we share the same spaces and we must make allowances so that others can also inhabit them,” explains the curator of the cycle, and of the Vinent installation, Irina Mutt, who simultaneously works in Spain and Finland.
“What I like most about Helena’s work is her radical response to the vision of diverse bodies as infantilized and incapable of sexual desire,” she adds and underlines. Accident that “has managed to cause the installation to invade other spaces of the Fundació Miró, it has overwhelmed the museum.” Mutt refers to the fact that Vinent’s work begins as soon as he heads down the stairs to the room.
The artist herself guides us down the stairs towards the main door of the room, where we confidently descend. But there is no entrance. Vinent has walled it with a white wooden wall in which he has made several holes. The frustration of entering, of seeing what is behind that wall, invades us. We can see through the holes that there are people on the other side, inside the room, enjoying the installation, but we cannot pass. Anger invades us: we are before the mirror of our pride.
“Welcome to what a person feels disc in the face of the barriers that the system puts in place,” says the artist. He then invites us to turn around and look at the staircase we came down. The partitions are full of slogans, such as: “Many stairs and little fun”, or “Look for the elevator”.
“This is when visitors have to go back up and ask to be taken by elevator to the room, as happens to many people.” disc”, Vinent releases. Finally, after descending in the elevator, access to the room is achieved, but it is done through the emergency door. It is no coincidence, Vinent explains that it is usually the norm for people with non-normative bodies.
Tremulous flesh of fabric and foam
An electronic sign hangs from the door beam that reads: “This space is not accessible to able-bodied bodies.” Once entered, we are faced with a stimulating and strange proposal, based on pieces of bright and strikingly colored fabrics with foam padding. They are all intertwined with black elastic strips that tighten them and suspend them in space.”
“I see bodies disc in tension,” says Vinent, who emphasizes that “underneath there are sexual vibrators arranged that make the composition vibrate like trembling flesh.” It is his vindication of the energy and sexual desire that diverse people have, just like ours, and which is usually totally ignored.
“It is this connection with queer and the sexual, with the leather, the black strips that tighten the bodies, one of the things that interests me most about this work by Helena,” says Mutt, who focuses on the theory queer crip as a debate that questions the binary vision we have of bodies between able-bodied and disabled, no matter how well we now talk about diverse bodies.
In this regard, Vinent is categorical: “We are another minority and like the rest, discriminated against and forced to adapt to standards that deny us as adults.”
The installation is completed with various screens, one of them containing didascalias, which are the precise instructions given by the playwright to the actor in a written work, warning and explaining everything related to the action or movement of the characters. Didascalias are also used to describe environmental noises to deaf people in films and television series. With them, Vinent tries to emphasize how a deaf person feels the world to whom any sound must be explained.
It also highlights the value of the accident as a driving force for people. discs. “We are considered an error in the system, an accident,” highlights the artist, who aims to turn around the supposed suffering of this fact with another digital screen that emits the following message: “The obsession with understanding everything when pleasure is in the accident.”
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