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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Pandora

Narcissism, Me, Me, Me, etc.

My box is titled ‘Narcissism, Me, Me, Me, etc.’ because I live in the dream capital of the world where appearance is paramount, and hope springs eternal.

According to the myth of Pandora, when the winged souls, the 10,000 woes, the spites that plagued mankind, were released by Pandora from the jar, only HOPE was left behind in the jar, and it was delusive HOPE that discouraged the mortals, through her lies, from committing a general suicide.

Because I live in Los Angeles, California, surrounded by vain, foolish, mischievous, idle and beautiful women, such as Pandora, I felt compelled to turn my box into an anti-feminist statement, that Pandora would have appreciated.

Pandora’s Box

With color I transform the construction into a different structure.  It is a practice which I apply in my work. The colors are those of springtime when the green has a radiance of the new-born. That’s why I could say that this box is the beginning of life, but it could be also the end. For me this is a profound meaning of Pandora’s box.

Map-Labyrinth

I opened the box’s door, I took off its top and I glued it to the bottom part to be a pedestal.  Then I painted the whole box in white and sealed it, following its shape with pieces of Plexiglas, on which appear (through the method of décollage that I have been using since 1974) fragmented images which constitute my labyrinths.  By this symbolic gesture of encasement and transparency, I hide away forever and protect the most precious feeling that remains buried at the bottom of this box since the time of Pandora;  Hope.

Bridge Between

I have been working with the image of the moon for the past two years, which on many levels has associations with women and the universal.

As my work is largely abstract, incorporating the specificity of the form and object of “the box” was a challenge.  The association with Pandora’s box set my mind back to the beginning of humanity, the myth of creation, the fall of man, loss of innocence, knowledge, and in particular, how woman is perceived. I began wanting to turn the box into a bridge, using it as a metaphor for women’s ability to access a more open-oriented position (meaning).  A bridge gives access between two lands, worlds, positions; over what seems impassable.

The material and color of the box dictated the other components of the work.  (There is a fleshiness to cedar and clay.)  The two ceramic circles which I used, connect the bridge, continuing and expanding the human sensation into abstraction.  The work relates to lack and possibility, of balance.

Pandora a Broken Myth

In doing this box I decided to see what the original myth of Pandora was. I was struck with the beauty and the imagery of Hesiod. I laughed at the obvious fear and envy that men have had at the creative female. I felt we could look at this myth and break it open and show women in all her creative force without fear or envy.

“as a favor to Zeus the father,
On this had been done much intricate work,
a wonder to look at:
wild animals, such as the mainland
and the sea also produce
in numbers, and he put many on,
the imitations of living
things that have voices, wonderful,
and it flashed in its beauty.
But when, to replace good,
he made this beautiful evil
thing, he led her out
where the rest of the gods and mortals
were, in the pride and glory
that the gray-eyed daughter of a great
father had given; wonder seized both immortals and mortals
as they gazed on this sheer deception.”

Hesiod translated by Richmond Lattimore

In Memory of My Father

This box turned out to be about the death of my father (1925-1986). In thinking about the exhibition and before I actually had the box in my hands I thought of “hope chests” and “Pandora’s box,” both representing women’s issues and lives. But behind these thoughts was always the image of coffins and bone boxes (the boxes that the bones of the dead in Greece are transferred into after their initial burial).

After receiving the box and playing around with it for awhile, I had to go with the more direct, personal association of my father’s death. So it became a shrine, a memento mori, a symbolic object. The words on top are FUTURE, PLACE, GOOD MAN, LIES. The words inside of the half-open box are HERA, MOTHER, THERAPY, FATHER, DREAM, STRANGER. We will all go to this future place. Here, a good man, lies. Hera, Greek goddess, wife of Zeus, mother/father/therapy, dream, father stranger.

Pandora’s Box

Where do my thoughts and language come from?

Do they arise out of a chaotic flux of sensations and mental images? Are there some rules or a deep structure underlying this apparent chaos? Is the Right Brain, more intuitive part,  more closely related to the unconscious (if there is such a thing) than the Left, logical, verbal part of the brain? My painting suggests these questions to me. I wonder how the part of me that knows is related to the part of me that doesn’t know what it knows.

In making this box for Women Beyond Borders I am reminded of that wonderfully curious woman, Pandora, who for centuries has been, to my way of thinking, erroneously blamed for all evils on earth. I discovered there’s another version of the story, and it goes like this:

The box which she opened contained everything that was good, and when, (against her husband’s advice) she raised the lid, ALL THAT WAS GOOD escaped out into the world. I like this story and think it’s a fine metaphor for the creative, open-minded nature of womankind.

Skin Deep

Spilling out of a Pandora’s box, previously concealed truths reveal themselves. A hand, a living experience and the intuition it contains, is full of signification. This can be translated in a multiplicity of paradoxical ways.

Beauty is a socioeconomic and political construction. How we depict women in art opens up a dialogue and an opportunity to affect our inter-relationships. We are not alone in deriving pleasure from the spectacle.  Manet’s Olympia, and the official ideology she implies, returns our gaze.

 

Pandora’s Box

The subject of this work, Pandora, like Eve, Lillith, Medusa, had her meaning and function inverted during the establishment of the patriarchal gods. Originally a persona of the earth goddess who rose from the earth with outstretched arms bringing life sustaining gifts of fruit and plants, she was rewritten, and like Eve became the source of misery and punishment for the human race.

Coffer Nephesh

The box, covered with lead, contains the soil of Israel. The phrase coffer nephesh in Hebrew, refers to ransom. Literally the word coffer means ransom and the word nephesh means soul.

COFFER: Like all objects whose essential quality is that of containing, it sometimes acquires the symbolic character of a heart, the brain or the maternal womb. The heart, the first of these meanings, is a figure characteristic of the symbolism of Romanesque art.

In a broader sense, receptacles which can be closed up have, from the earliest times, represented all things that may hold secrets, such as the Ark of the Covenant of the Hebrews, or Pandora’s box.

(J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, New York)

Untitled (Pandora)

People say that in some northern farmyards a cover closes the wells that are not in use anymore. The owners justify this closure, saying that children or visitors could, accidentally, fall to the bottom of one of these wells. The truth is that their motives are less thoughtful. What they fear is not that somebody might fall, but that the child who was thrown to the bottom of the well, like a family secret, suddenly surfaces again to the world.

Magic Box

Covered with computer motherboards, connecting wires and glittering holographic stickers, harbors a rabbit inside, the oldest trick in the book. The rabbit represents the ambiguous nature of technology, simultaneously creating fantastic and magical results, while conversely negating magic and myth through infinite research and explanation of detail.

The march of technology is rampant, and it would be foolish not to become involved. Considering its widespread implications for the future, it offers a Pandora’s Box hope to potentially help the world through science, medicine, information, etc.

Changes will come just as they always have, only with lightning speed. Time for contemplation is scarce, but it is nevertheless necessary, for we don’t want to find in the end that the magic tricks which technology promises are simply the same illusions which have clouded our visions in the past.