Objects of Memory: A Lecture by Melanie Bilenker
Fourth installment of the lecture series “The Commonwealth” at the Philadelphia Art Alliance.
The work of jewelry artist and metalsmith Melinie Bilenker is steeped in history that is both deeply personal and culturally specific. Inspired by photographic documentation of the ordinary moments of her own life, her works are created out of the her own hair set in layer after layer of resin, then placed on ivory laminate and most often fixed in gold or silver. Summarizing in her own words, Bilenker explains her oeuvre as representations of quiet moments that she characterizes as “the things we forget as soon as it happens.”
Melanie Bilenker graduated from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2000 where she studied under Sharon Church. A 2010 Pew Fellowship in the Arts Recipient, Bilenker has also been commissioned to produce pieces for the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Scotland, among others.
Bilenker began her lecture by explaining her fascination with a City with deep roots in American history. Since moving to Philadelphia over 14 years ago, her approach to jewelry was initially influenced by a compulsion to collect discarded materials that tell a story of the people who used them. She finds comfort in tools, techniques and materials from the past, citing such historical landmarks as the famous Wannamaker Organ for its detailed construction using pneumatics controlled by six massive ivory keyboards. Collecting such objects as ivory keys from discarded instruments and other materials that signify their original use eventually brought to the forefront the fundamental question for the artist of what people choose to remember and why.
This initial inspiration led to Bilenker’s research into objects of commemoration. With Christian origins, the memento mori can be found throughout the history of art. In the mid-17th century, memorial jewels honoring individual family members often included symbols of death such as skulls, cross-bones, hour-glasses and the angel of death, amongst others. These items usually contained actual strands of hair with the individual identified by a gold-wire monogram. Moving into the Victorian era, this evolved into the tradition of creating ribbons or wreaths made of hair from the deceased loved-one or members of their family. A part of the intricate world of Victorian mourning customs, hair was sewed or twisted into intricate floral patterns or even portraits of the departed.1 As a metonym for the individual, the hair incorporated into these objects allowed mourners to dwell upon mortality while continuing a relationship with the deceased. Eventually through the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, the Victorian hair wreath was replaced by memorial portraiture, which provided the middle class with a keepsake of their family members taken post-mortem.
Although the history of the use of hair as commemorative object is integral to her work, for Bilenker, photography is equally imperative. In the context of her work, its purpose serves more like a piece of evidence of what took place rather than a commemorative portrait. Bilenker cites the seminal theories on photography by Ronald Barthes. In Camera Lucida (1980), Barthes provides a description of photography as a connection between the images, time and absence. Ultimately, Barthes finds that significance of photography can be found in the particularity of the subject of the picture, signifying that the moment "really was there". In the context of Bilenker’s work, it is interesting to note Barthes distinction in a photograph between the studium and the punctum when explaining the viewer’s attraction and association with a particular image,2 While the studium brings to bear our cultural background to inform the subject of the photograph (constituting the death of the artist), Bilenker seems to focus on the punctum, which Barthes describes as the details that intrigue and entice the viewer, and insinuate the past. The punctum has the power of creating a narrative beyond that instant, while remaining a detail. In this context, Bilenker’s pieces--with titles such as brushing teeth (2009), hemming pants (2009), and falling asleep (2008)--signify the power of detail to convey a story; a story about what preceded it and how it can infer to events in the future. Translating the photograph through drawing with her own hair connects the intimacy of the individual with` everyday activities that are familiar to the viewer.
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The collection of cast-off bits as memories of the everyday is also the source of inspiration for many contemporary artists that have influenced Bilenker’s work. Citing Janine Antoni’s, Lick and Lather (1993), two busts composed with chocolate and soap that were used by the artist to cleanse and feed herself; and Tim Hawkinson’s Bird (1997) made entirely of the artist’s nail clippings, both artists specifically self-reference the body, decay, dissolution and mortality. This is analogous to Bilenker’s use of readapted found objects combined with material taken from her own body to inform her work. In addition, Bilenker references the work of jewelry artist Bettina Speckner who combines enamel, intaglio, jewels with found ferrotypes. Using these anonymous formal portraits, Speckner’s recreation of these images into precious objects to be worn signals a level of connectivity between artist and wearer that jewelry itself implies. However, unlike the formal portraiture used by Speckner, Bilenker is much more interested in the more casual format of the snapshot. Referencing Sophie Calle’s L’Hotel (1981), in which the artist spent three weeks documenting the remnants of guests in their hotel rooms, as well as Jamie Livingston’s Poloroid a Day (1979-1997), the informal portrait suggests a glimpse into one’s private life that connotes a sort of voyeuristic pleasure. This seems to reinforce the intimacy of jewelry itself, seen in the enclosed locket drying (2009) and Bilenker’s production of viewfinders such as clawfoot tub (2007), both of which remain private only to be viewed by the wearer.
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Ultimately, Bilenker’s work also reflects the condition of craft production today. Referencing cultural history, photography, sculpture and performance art, her work like many artists trained in a specific medium, looks outside material and process, thus shunning the traditional perimeters of what constitutes contemporary practice. Her intricate constructions still imply a love of technique, but their content suggests a conceptual complexity beyond form or purpose.
Melissa Caldwell
Director of Exhibitions
Philadelphia Art Alliance
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In 18th Century America, endorsed the fashion of hair jewelry and made it easy to acquire. The following excerpt extolling the virtues of hairwork is from c. 1850,"Hair is at once the most delicate and last of our materials and survives us like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with angelic nature, may almost say, I have a piece of thee here, not unworthy of thy being now." Pattee, Fred Lewis. . New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966: 392.
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Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.
Images:
Melanie Bilenker, hemming pants, 2009 Gold, ebony, resin, pigment, hair
Photo: M. Bilenker. Retrieved from http://www.melaniebilenker.com/wk_09hemmingpants.shtml
Unknown, Victorian Hair Wreath. ca. 1850. Various types of hair woven in a flower and foliage design in natural colors with bead adornments. Retrieved from http://www.whitakerauction.com
Tim Hawkinson, Bird, 1997, Fingernail parings and superglue, Ace Gallery. Retrieved from http://www.acegallery.net/artwork.php?pageNum_ACE=31&Artist=1
Bettina Speckner, The Cloths of Heaven - Brooch 2009, Ferrotype, Diamond, Silver. Retrieved from http://www.bettina-speckner.com/40983.html
Melanie Bilenker, clawfoot tub, 2007, Gold, ivory, resin, hair
Photo: K. Sprague Retrieved from http://www.melaniebilenker.com/wk_07viewfinders1.shtml