I did not notice them at first. Dressed in black, a procession moving silently amongst the bare trees. All in black, like mourners, an anonymous cortege, a black river of despondence against the white snow. The long skirts, capes and big hats spoke of different times. It took some time before I realised that the procession did not consist of humans, but of – apes.

Helena Blomqvist’s art bears the double hallmark of philosophical reflection and a cunning sense of humour. For many, the mission of photography is to describe the world. Instead, Blomqvist builds the world, over and over again. By using models and props, she creates a world just as real as the one outside her studio. Previously, she turned gender stereotypes upside down, and pop cultural archetypes inside out, well aware that they are the cornerstones in our culture that reflect the imbalances within our society. At times it is as if she gently pulls away the curtains to let us peek at a series of events on the very verge of the apocalypse, other times we witness the consequence of a silent and personal resistance.

Throughout her career, she has come to focus more on the dramas that take place in her peculiar milieus, a strategy that she takes a step further in her new works. Now, the main characters are played by animals – preferably apes – that seem to be present in some distant time of war. The uniforms and props breathe an air of early 20th century. When the animals are lined up in front of the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb, they appear unable to understand what they see. The colours are sparsely distributed like in old photographs. Most vivid are the fields with their small red flowers that stand out like red drops of blood against the uniform grey background. It alludes to the Canadian military doctor John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” from 1915. It is, perhaps, the most well known and quoted literary work from the First World War: ”In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row / That mark our place; and in the sky / The larks, still bravely singing, fly/ Scarce heard amid the guns below”.

Poppies were the only plants that survived in the ravaged and colourless landscape of the trench war. Since then, the blood red flowers have become a symbol of the nameless victims of the war. In Helena Blomqvist’s works we can see blurry pictures of soldiers in troop divisions that long ago ceased to exist. They belong to a world, to which we have no access today. In time, one starts to wonder whether they ever existed, or if they too are a product of the photo montage’s vast machinery. Oblivion obscures the view.

The apes, what are they doing there? Apes dressed as humans usually tend to look as though they belong to a circus, but they do have a cultural history of their own. When the controversy about Darwin’s theory of evolution was raging at its worst in the 20th century, Darwin’s opponents often pointed out what they found to be absurd in his teachings by portraying him and his proselytes as apes wearing costumes. In fact, the same visual arguments are still used by today’s opponents to the theory of evolution. The classic science fiction movie “The Planet of the Apes” from 1968 has a different take on history, and portrays the apes as lords over the humans. At the end of the movie, the main character suddenly realises that it is not a strange planet ruled by apes, but, in fact, Earth in a distant future.

Helena Blomqvist’s apes are not autocratic masters striving to conquer the world. They take part in our human tragedy, and watch, together with other living creatures, how the sun is setting on our planet and how the world is getting colder. In the end, nothing exists but a golden frog, shuffling across the cracked and dried out earth.

Perhaps, there is another story to tell. In one of the pictures, a little ape sits alone on a bed of water lilies while thunder and lightning rages in the background. In eastern philosophy the water lily is a symbol for both enlightenment and resurrection. There is always another aspect, another possible interpretation. Helena Blomqvist’s artistic strength is that she entrusts each of us to reach our own conclusion.

ANDERS OLOFSSON
Art critic