artist 2

Sylvia Hennequin ©

A psychological journey about the releasing and regaining of freedom, balance, and natural power. It is a response to the artificial, superficial, violent, and unbalanced world in which the power of the earth is highly underestimated. Finally, it is also about a world and its people desperately in need of transformation in order to become more balanced.

Overall Meaning:

In this series there are Creators who have divine abilities to create their world in any shape they wish and Creatures who are a consequence of the world and its inhabitants.

On a personal level, I see the world as my own body and mind with some beautiful and healthy parts, some troubled and weak parts, some violent and damaged parts, some parts still in conflict and parts which contain the darkness and the monsters.

Although I realize I'm part of the world, I often feel as out of balance as the outer world I see around me. For me, then, the main purpose of creating is gaining and maintaining balance. To reach for that balance, I had to face the dark creatures, the silent wars, the deep swamps, and the grieving inside me.

One way of coming to grips with my inner self was to see how it's mirrored in the world around me. Indeed, when I look in the face of my companions in the outer world or when I look at the culture, the history, and the nature of earth, I am looking in a mirror. Looking closely at both the outer world and the reflection of it inside me, I have divine powers which I can use to reshape myself and the world around me. Put another way, I have within me-and through my art-the power to transform.

As I create my art, as I look at myself and the world at large, I see many things that I've tried to bring to realization in the Eve series. For one, I have tried to create goddesses creating and shaping and goddess-like beings in these pieces who appear to be mutants, embodiments of the Mother Earth we've exploited. Still they are creatures of the earth and, therefore, still extremely powerful-just like the earth herself who shows her power with the forces of nature that no human ever can control, either now or in the future. These creatures, like me, are trying to achieve balance in an often upside down yet still powerful world.

Another thing I'm exploring is how I see the male and female energies of people out of balance, especially in the devaluation of female energies and divineness, of the femininity which I had learned to cherish. I belief that when every human being is able to balance their male and female energies, the world will be more in balance.

Finding an Authentic Technique:

I use a layering technique that I believe allows me to examine the depths of the inner and outer world. What I am trying to achieve visually is a representation of acceptance and letting go, of finding new insights in difficulties, of creative gains emerging out of problem areas, of discovering unprecedented possibilities in obstructions.

It's interesting how the mixed media technique I use helped me to uncover so many of the deeper issues that I had to struggle with as a human, as a woman, and as an artist. There were many days when I felt physically ill trying to get to the truth of what I wanted to create, but those hours of often painful introspection allowed me to find a manual on how to live life. Through trial and error, through self-acceptance, I was able to emerge a better person and a better communicator. The Eve series is a living journal of that journey-the journey of finding a truthful, authentic technique that allows me to present my message of unity and balance to the world.

Themes:

Some of the themes that I investigate include upgrading feminine values, balancing female and male qualities in the world and on an individual level, integrating the destructive and the constructive nature of the human psyche, weighing the polarities of the human mind, and exploring the primal aspects of the human mind.

Symbols and Mythology:

In the Eve series, there are numerous symbols that form the basis for a personal mythos. These include:

- Mother Earth; her power, her reaction to a destructive world where feminine qualities like nature itself, nurturing, giving birth, food, flora and fauna are devalued.
- Mother Earth conceived natural Creatures out of the need to deal with violence and lack of understanding of her great power.
- The Earth Goddesses using their natural constructive and destructive powers, showing their independent and creative nature.
- The Snake as a symbol of feminine powers, an ancient creature of the earth, a creature of duality able to accomplish transformation and healing. The Snake as a potent and very old symbol representing wisdom, rejuvenation, as well as feminine spiritual energy (the Kundalini): the Goddess within.
- The use of the color green as a symbol for the power of nature and creating balance as well as a symbol for poison. (While I'm creating, I am detoxing myself.)
- The Penis and dildo, showing independency and integrated male abilities.
- The Vulva/Vagina as the ultimate symbol of femininity, for analysing and exploring a woman's power and beauty, the source of life and creation; dealing with its stigma. Also ource, origin, sacred force, power or energy. It has always signified a gateway between the worlds. This represents the feminine Creative power of the Goddess, the Mother of all.
- Sexuality as symbol of pure creative energy and as a symbol of the dark primal powerful energies.
- The Horned One who represents power.

Personal stuff (© 2006 Sylvia Hennequin)

My personal goal is to develop a sense of total freedom to create whatever I need and want to do. I am confronted with the rules, standards and values of my surroundings, which I experience as dramatically restricting.
I'm not able and don't want to adapt myself to the bullshit of the common world.
I use my art as a tool to deal with the darkness and monsters in my head and the darkness of the world. Out of a childish perspective as well as the perspective of an adult woman.
I create out of my inside world instead out of the outside world

I'm in my own inside world and I don't want to be influenced too much by the outside world (being aware that influences happens mostly unconscious). When I look too much at others, I can't cope with all the influences which keep jumping in my head. I have to be alone without too many stimulants to come into a creative process. I'm a solo player and don't want to be too much involved by nowadays art world and the past, on a conscious level.
Off course I'm a part of the current (art) world anyway.
I'm aware of the influence of the conventional (art) world around me on a unconscious level which drives me to the opposite site. I express myself in my very own natural and personal way.

Just being the creator of my own world. I just need to do this, expressing myself in freedom, this life urge to create because that's just the way I am, an integer, sensitive, individual, independent artist. My personality is so obvious in my artwork.

I'm very sensitive and I live in my own world full of fantasy, nice full of dreams, crazy stuff, jokes but also frightening. A lot of monsters appear and make me restless. Images of war, conflicts, fear passing by. From minute to minute I'm trying to handle all the crazy stuff in my head. Thoughts come into my brains endlessly. And all the stimulants from the outside world come into my head multiplied.
So I have to be careful because of my energy level. I can be very easy out of balance and than the darkness finds its way easily. Creating gives me balance, a way out.
Also I'm very dualistic which can also create conflicts in my head.
This is the reason why I can't do anything else than making art. It is my number one priority need in life what makes it possible for me to live. Without art as source of expression and communication tool I'll be weak and depressed and I'll become hysterical.
My work shows this hot stuff.
Because of my art I can cope the world and even laugh at it. Humour is power that gives me the possibility to put things in perspective.
Because of my sensitivity it is easy for me to create on a unconscious level and release my fantasy all the time. Also it helps me to be aware and to trust that all the solutions in the creating process will come to me at the right time.

Sometimes I sense devaluation, about my art, my personality and my femininity. My power is to stay tuned with myself, doing what I believe in. That's my way.

I don't fit into the common perception of art in my surroundings.
But there are also opposite movements developing where I do fit in such as MOWA in Belgium (museum of weird art) that maybe can be seen as a post-Cobra movement in ideals and expression.

I'm always aware of my surroundings. Most of the time I don't understand the outside world. I don't understand the general standards, values and restrictions.
I think the world is out of balance. There's a devaluation of the nature, breeding children, environment, animals, food, the totality of the earth. Our base of existence. I see it as a devaluation of feminine values. This is one level symbolised in the Bunny series. A woman's body with a bunny mask with some damaged parts and established in a sensual pose, but also a very powerful and proud woman full of colours.
On a more personal level there is me as a modern, thinking woman in today's world. Confronted with ideas of the outside world how I'm supposed to behave, what appearance I should have.
The Bunny series symbolizes my inner conflicts, out of internalized values and adopted crazy ideas from my childhood and growing up and developing me as an intelligent, independent and sensual woman in today's world where superficiality becomes more and more the standard and the pure and natural is not of importance. It also expresses the conflict of needing attention, to feel a right for existence and to be seen as a respectably member of the society.

I don't understand why some parts of the human body are disturbing and other parts not, only based on the difference between two creatures. So I like to place things in a different context as seen in Dickhead.

The Monumental Portraits

First there was Scarface, a mixed media painting with a lot of burned stuff.
Leather and a lot of fake and plastics and glue threads, smelled like hell. Poisoned black damp, taking my breath away. Feeling poisoned inside, a terrible destructive sensation.
What could I do than just accept this case? Making the best of it as usual.
Scarface is an observer. Damaged but still very strong and very cute. He swallows the world inside him. His eyes remain lively and bright. Adorable, confronting and intelligent.
Al the pieces together put on the linen, selected round the blue eyes.
It started with collecting all the materials, with a sense that it has to be a portrait composed with burned skin and fake leather and plastics. Because I felt like burning inside, destruction becomes construction.

I need another portrait or maybe something else. Oils and close-up photography. I had this beautiful model available. A nice shiny photo digital arranged in a very bright colour, clear-blue, pure. Very design-like. To me it's a beautiful shaped form used as an object to create a new context.
It happens mostly on a unconscious level. I've learned to move by heart. I arranged the photos by feeling and by sense of structure and aesthetics. After that I had to wait for a week before the portrait introduces itself to me. It was 'Dickhead'.
With its fire- coloured centred eye Dickhead draws you into its head and then it becomes clear that its head is full of phalluses. Getting attention and becoming aware of its reality. The symbol of the phallus is full of strength and power, activity and virility, bright of colour. Dickhead itself looks like a exploited figure in bad shape but powerful. Duality and contradiction. Power can be used in both ways; to construct and to destruct. A head with power but no brains becomes a Dickhead. The world is ruled by a lot of Dickheads.
The Dickheads have taken over a great part of the world, with their curious heads and their yellow smoking-a-hell-of-a-lot teeth. Sticking their noses to much in somebody else's business. Not aware of their own unawareness.

Smileface considers itself as an adjustable smiling mask for bearing al its impregnated eyes.