NATALKA HUSAR’S AND KATJA KESSIN’S …ccca.concordia.ca/academy/papers_PDFs/6-adeline/Adeline1.pdfNATALKA HUSAR’S AND KATJA KESSIN’S PANDORA’S BOXES Adeline Paradis-Hautcoeur

ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012

NATALKA HUSAR’S AND KATJA KESSIN’S PANDORA’S BOXES

Adeline Paradis-Hautcoeur In this era of virtual boom, the arrival of new technologies like videos and Internet give artists new

possibilities in which they can express themselves: theatre can be now performed by online

transmission and Facebook can be viewed as an artistic database.1 In this context, the way artists

legitimate their use of painting, an old artistic medium, is interesting. Thus, this exhibition presents two

painters, Natalka Husar (b. 1951) and Katja MacLeod Kessin (1959-2006) that use figuration in a very

personal matter as testimonies of national trauma connected to their own family histories. Even if

Husar was born in the United States, she was aware of Ukraine’s harsh social and political situation

through her parents. Indeed, she grew up in a Ukrainian family who emigrated to the United States in

1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War. She then moved to Toronto as a young adult in 1973.2

Katja MacLeod Kessin (1959-2006) was born in Hamburg, Germany and moved to Montreal in her

early twenties.3 Like most Germans, her family was deeply involved in and affected by the Second

World War. The paintings of Natalka Husar and Katja MacLeod Kessin are presented in this virtual

exhibition as Pandora’s boxes. In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman created out of clay

by Zeus in order to get revenge on Prometheus for his theft of fire. This Greek goddess had beauty as

well as curiosity. Zeus left Pandora a pretty box without revealing its contains, but with the firm

recommendation to not open it under any circumstances, and then he sent Pandora to Prometheus to be

his wife. After Prometheus’s refusal, Pandora married his brother and when her situation was secured

by her marriage, she could not resist the temptation of opening the box. In what she thought would only

be a glimpse, she let out sorrows that were spread all over the world.4 In the same way as Pandora’s

nice box contained all the worst things, both artists’ nice colours, patterns and textures shed light on

Ukrainian and German contemporary taboos. Because Husar's double-citizenship is at the core of what

defines her identity, her iconography refers to images from her personal life, her family history and her


displacement as part of an emigrated community.5 Kessin’s canvases in their formal, almost decorative

aspects also offers a pretty way to present disturbing truths.6 Although she was too young to have lived

in the Third Reich, as a German, she could still feel the weight of these dark times. Hence, her imagery

is linked to the hidden secrets of German families, which she decided to confront rather than hide.7


Natalka Husar

Pandora’s Parcel to Ukraine

1993

224 x 274 cm

Oil on linen

From the series Black Sea Blue

National Gallery of Canada

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=6076&title=Read+Between+the+Lines&artist=Natalka+Husar&link_id=1624


In her journey to Ukraine in 1992, Natalka Husar found a country torn between the attraction of the

West and a Soviet legacy.8 Pandora’s Parcel to Ukraine depicts the absurdity of the Western

stereotypes about Ukraine. Like Gustave Courbet did in his Atelier (1855), the artist represents the

characters, real and fictionalized, of Ukraine's society.9 Whereas Courbet suggests the hopes of a future

generation with the picturing of two boys, Husar’s ghostly young girls are indicative of the uncertainty

of the next generation. Ukrainian immigrants to North America, away from this harsh reality, try to

help their relatives by sending useless parcels, which occupy the front right side of this painting.

However, chocolate boxes will not help in the country’s reconstruction. Insufficient aid and

inappropriate gifts from the West mock the destitute social and economic state of to-day's Ukraine.


Natalka Husar

Odessa’s Tears

1995

224 x 137 cm

Oil on linen

From the series Black Sea Blue


Husar’s 1995 painting Odessa’s Tears is constructed around a poignant narrative detail. Inside a dark

circle, the viewer can distinguish a pram falling down huge steps, a scene inspired by Sergeï

Eisenstein’s 1925 movie, Battleship Potemkin. These stairs which are considered a formal entrance

into the city from the sea are the best known symbol of Odessa. The crying baby in the pram plunges

into the painting, its horrifying movement reinforced by the way the sheets are disposed below, as if

melding the shape of the steps and the upside down body of the crying women who we assume to be

the child's mother. The accumulation of drapery guides our attention to different objects such as

children shoes, Ukrainian dolls, rotten cucumbers and cherry wine.10 The bright colours and textures of

the fabric evoke a luxurious life, but the tragic scene reveal something else: Mother Ukraine's

nightmarish dream and the catastrophic reality of a child whose destiny is uncertain.


Katja MacLeod Kessin

Don’t you see that everything’s in perfect order?

1990

121.9 x 147.3 cm

Acrylic on canvas

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=7932&title=Don%27t+you+see+that+everything%27s+in+perfect+order%3F&artist=Kessin,+Katja&link_id=1663


In this painting, an old blind woman sits at a kitchen table and shows the viewer a neat sewing box

while everything around her is complete chaos. A fallen chair and lamp, a scrapbook of Hitler’s

pictures, an apple core, and army boots are scattered on the ground. The skin of a peeled potato on the

table swirls into the wood grain of the floor, making the definition of space unclear. On the table,

spilled red wine flows in two directions towards a big kitchen knife and the sewing box, which contains

a heart-shaped pincushion: the women’s heart seems to be bleeding. The woman, a composite of

Kessin’s mother, her grandmother’s and herself appears to be the guardian of the family's secrets.11

After the war, generations of women desperately have tried to keep their sewing boxes in order with a

cushion of love despite the fact that family secrets are creating chaos everywhere. Pandora’s wish to

contain troubles, afflictions and miseries are in vain.


Katja MacLeod Kessin

Baking Little Men

1991

121.9 x 147.3 cm

Acrylic on canvas

http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=7932&title=Don%27t+you+see+that+everything%27s+in+perfect+order%3F&artist=Kessin,+Katja&link_id=1663


Baking Little Men also depicts a kitchen. Here the oven door is open, and a plate with cookies either

waits to be baked or eaten. The composition dominated by the colour red, and the title of the painting

refers to the to the crematory ovens of the concentration camps where Jews were murdered in the

Holocaust. The reference to death is also represented by the skulls printed on the kitchen rag.12 Kessin

inserts Third Reich imagery into the daily objects of a domestic space to suggest that German families

still have not dealt with the atrocities of the Second World War and Holocaust which are so much a

part of their legacy that their homes are haunted by this history.13


NOTES 1 Falk Richter’s Dieu est un DJ is performed by two actors, one in Quebec, the other in Switzerland; the action is simultaneously broadcasted in both countries. Après Faceb00k is a summer 2012 project by the artists Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier and Serge-Olivier Rondeau. Accessed December 17, 2012 http://www.montheatre.qc.ca/archives/15-autres/2012/dieudj.html. 2 Carol Podedworny, “Real Life Romance,” Black Sea Blue: Natalka Husar Paintings (Regina: The Rosemont Art Gallery Society Inc., 1995) 15. 3 Katja MacLeod Kessin, To Lend the Dead a Voice: Second-Generation German Visual Art, P.h.D. dissertation (Montreal: Concordia University, 2003) 120. 4 “Pandore,” Encyclopedia Universalis, accessed December 17, 2012 http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/pandore/. 5 Shirley Madill, “Husar’s Masquerade,” Natalka Husar – Blond with Dark Roots (Hamilton: The Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2001) 11. 6 David Elliott, “Home Fires: an appreciation of Katja MacLeod Kessin’s narrative paintings,” Katja MacLeod Kessin (Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007) 13. 7 Elliott, 13. 8 Podedworny, 17. 9 Loren Lerner, “Natalka Husar,” Memories and Testimonies (Montreal: Concordia University, 2002) 65. 10 Lerner, 63. 11 Elliott, 14. 12 Loren Lerner, “Performing Katja,” Katja MacLeod Kessin (Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007) 32. 13 Kessin, 121.


BIBLIOGRAPHY Elliott, David. “Home Fires: An Appreciation of Katja MacLeod Kessin’s Narrative Paintings.” Katja

MacLeod Kessin. Exhibition catalogue. 17 October – 16 November 2007. FOFA Gallery. Concordia University. Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007. 9-17.

Lerner, Loren. “Natalka Husar.” Memories and Testimonies. Exhibition catalogue. 9 April – 18 May

2002. Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery. Montreal: Concordia University, 2002. 62-67. Lerner, Loren. “Performing Katja.” Katja MacLeod Kessin. Exhibition catalogue. 17 October – 16

November 2007. FOFA Gallery. Concordia University. Montreal: The FOFA Gallery, 2007. 29-38.

MacLeod Kessin, Katja. To Lend the Dead a Voice: Second-Generation German Visual Art. P.h.D.

dissertation. Montreal: Concordia University, 2003. Madill, Shirley. “Husar’s Masquerade.” Natalka Husar – Blond with Dark Roots. Exhibition catalogue.

14 February – 7 April 2002. Hamilton: The Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2001. 11-13. “Pandore.” Encyclopedia Universalis. Accessed December 17, 2012.

http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/pandore/. Podedworny, Carol. “Real Life Romance.” Black Sea Blue: Natalka Husar Paintings. Exhibition

catalogue. 7 June – 8 July 1995. Regina: The Rosemont Art Gallery Society Inc., 1995. 12-23.

Documents

NATALKA HUSAR’S AND KATJA KESSIN’S …ccca.concordia.ca/academy/papers_PDFs/6-adeline/Adeline1.pdfNATALKA HUSAR’S AND KATJA KESSIN’S PANDORA’S BOXES Adeline Paradis-Hautcoeur