In Conversation—Cydney Payton with Sherry Wiggins

The Mirror of Helen, 20 x 30,” 2022

This conversation with curator and writer Cydney Payton took place in relationship to the exhibit On Sappho, Helen and Aphrodite, an exhibition of performative photographs I produced in collaboration with photographer Luís Filipe Branco. The exhibit will be on view at Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver, Colorado October 31^st to December 2^nd 2023. The opening reception is November 2^nd from 5 to 8pm and an artist talk will take place November 18^th from 10:30 to noon.

CP: Congratulations on your show, On Sappho, Helen and Aphrodite, at Michael Warren Contemporary.

SW: Thank you. I’m excited to talk with you about it!

CP: To frame our conversation, you have been engaging with other artists’ images and practices as a modality of self-exploration for more than a decade. You referred to your practice as performative but also as embodying and enacting.

SW: I am compelled to study the lives and work of women. In doing so, I have found a kind of courage and sense of self-power. That has led me to create an artistic practice that is more performance based.

The women I study become the subjects of various projects and bodies of work. The photographs document my artistic process and the practice itself; the photographs are also the intended result. While I am performing, I envision the poses to be a photographic work. Yes, enactment and embodiment—the terms you mention—are definitely the terms that describe this work.

The beauty of performative art for me has been that my body can exist in different environments. Somehow those environments—sites, places, atmospheres—come to represent the women I am thinking about and making work about. That process is empathic, yet it exists because I have excavated and studied their lives and work. Until recently, most of those women were artists. Now, I am working with a broader representation of historical and feminine voices in creating the Heroines Project.

CP: You are very process driven in your artistic practice. You make a lot of images.

SW: The work is created through in-depth research, editing, and post-production of thousands of images. Each image goes through the processes of the performative act, lens and shutter, preproduction on a digital screen/film, printing, and, finally, exhibited object.

But in the end, I am forever an installation artist. Thus, the final narrative of an exhibition arrives because I care about the spatial dynamics between the audience and the art. An exhibition offers a liminal plane where the viewer and the object—the concept and the artist—participate. In the case of On Sappho, Helen and Aphrodite, I hope to create a way of confronting volumes of history largely written by men.

Sappho’s Crown, 22 x 33,” 2022

CP: The exhibition insists upon directness of viewership. We cannot look away. We are obligated to make comparisons, historical and contemporary, among these three iconic representations of the feminine. Sappho is the first heroine you bring into view. Her words, from the few remaining papyrus fragments, are sprinkled throughout the installation in excerpts taken from translations by Diane Raynor and poet Anne Carson. These traces of Sappho, which have survived over centuries, to be investigated, translated, and (re)interpreted, anchor the show.

SW: I investigate women, both fictional and real, such as Sappho. She was a real person; we know that because we have her words. Helen and Aphrodite are mythical and archetypal figures, but for me Sappho has an artist’s voice. As I delved into the translations of her texts, which were originally songs meant to be performed and sung and accompanied by dancers and instrumentation, I found her to be so modern. And her subjectivity feminist and feminine. She is speaking from 2,800 years ago, and, even so, the work resonates with me as being in the present moment.

In Poem #58, which is also called “The Old Age Poem,” Sappho speaks to me as an artist very directly, as she speaks about herself at an older age. In truth, I am inserting myself into the lives and stories of these heroines from my position as a sixty-something-year-old woman.

CP: Even though your photographs present a type of romanticism in tone and composition, there is a feminist message about love in the work that pervades the exhibition.

SW: Love means many things. Gender might be implicit, but it is also fluid. Though Aphrodite was not seen as a supporter of lesbianism in the ancient Greek world, maybe because it’s mostly stuff written by men, she should be seen as totally supportive of all forms of love (and sexuality, too). I love this line that Aphrodite speaks to Sappho: “Who, O Sappho, is wronging you? For if she flees, soon she will pursue. If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them. If she does not love, soon she will love, even unwillingly.”

CP: Beautiful.

SW: There is this complexity of love, the giving and receiving, the joy and the loss, in the poem. I just love this advice from Aphrodite. And Sappho loves Aphrodite—she’s her main goddess, and she speaks with her a lot.

Aphrodite with Roses I, 30 x 20,” 2022

CP: The photographs also contain an abundance of symbolism, for example roses in the images of Aphrodite. For Aphrodite, you looked to the Pre-Raphaelite painting Venus Verticordia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The painting is of a beautiful young woman with an apple and a dart. In your diptych, Aphrodite with Roses, you present us with an apple and a bouquet of red roses against a figure on a proverbial bed of roses.

Venus Verticordia, 32 x 26,” Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864

SW: I was riffing on Venus Verticordia. I don’t expect the viewer to make that connection, but roses do serve as a backdrop in both the painting and in the diptych. The roses are brought forward to perhaps deliver other meanings. Both Venus and Aphrodite are usually represented as beautiful and sometimes sexy young maidens. Rossetti’s painting sort of morphed into the work in the moments when photographer Luís Branco and I were making these pictures. I had an idea of where I wanted to go. We set up the photo shoot toward that idea. Even so, every photograph has its own performative life, such as it did with creating Aphrodite. The image is obviously me, an older woman, and you see all the wrinkles on my neck and face.

Aphrodite with Roses II, 30 x 20,” 2022

CP: Your decolletage.

SW: My decolletage. And my breast is exposed, as Venus’s is in the painting. The work is compressed and cropped, cut off, and presented larger-than-life size. The face and the boob and the arms, the roses, everything operates against a natural sense of scale.

CP: Rossetti’s version was also the first time that he painted a nude figure. He, too, compressed and zoomed in to create an artificial reality that reads more intimate and sexualized. His other images were more full-bodied and fully clothed. There is a mirror between your image and Rossetti’s image as far as being on the heterosexual edge of desirability; it’s almost camp.

SW: After making and producing these photographs, I looked up who Venus Verticordia was in Roman mythology. I discovered that she was a goddess who protected young women and older matrons from their own sexual appetites. This is the opposite of what my Aphrodite and the Greek Aphrodite are all about. I am inserting myself into Rossetti’s view but as this older woman who is sexualized through my autonomy of choice. I’m in a bed of roses as an older woman, not as a subject posed against roses to suggest a social norm of idealized beauty. My Aphrodite is one of generosity. She is for ALL love.

CP: Is Aphrodite your main goddess?

SW: I’ve always thought it was Aphrodite. As I learn more and more about her, I do adore her. But she is kind of tricky too. She actually put Helen in a bad position. It was Aphrodite who made a promise to Paris. In the Judgment of Paris Aphrodite tells Paris that if he gives her the golden apple and deems her the most beautiful goddess over Hera and Athena, she will give him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. That was a little presumptuous, her doing that to Helen!

CP: Venus Verticordia also means “changes of the heart.” That could be one way of looking at Helen After Troy. The image presents us with a Helen full of regret, after the war, abduction, kidnapping (or elopement) with Paris. We all know about Helen from history, certainly the Odyssey and the Iliad, but you have augmented that reading with something new.

Helen After Troy, 33 x 22,” 2022

SW: We shot that photograph in March. We were shooting Helen with her gown and crown and jewels in the swimming pool. When I got out of the pool, it was dark and I was cold. We can see how miserable I was. That’s when Luís said, “Just one more shot.” I was like, “You know, Luís, I am fucking cold.”

Later, when I saw the proofs for the image, I thought, well here’s Helen after Troy. In the ancient story, Helen comes home from Troy with her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta. After the fall of Troy, he had been meaning to kill her when he captured her, but he couldn’t because she was so beautiful (and her breasts!). According to the Odyssey, he brings her home and they have a nice life in the palace in Sparta, entertaining guests with lavish parties.

And, who really believes that? How could she have gone through the torture of the ten-year war in Troy with thousands of Greeks and Trojans dying, purportedly because of her, and just go home and have a nice life in the palace? I thought this is what she really would have looked like. She would look like a drowned rat, a drowned queen. Helen After Troy is one of my favorite images in the show.

CP: Helen After Troy brings us to an alternative ending of what has been known. You point us there through the meta structure of your work. For example, Sappho’s poems reference both Aphrodite and Helen. And, when we take in the larger view, we can see you enacting Sappho, Helen, and Aphrodite in the context of the twentieth-century artist/performer Claude Cahun. How has Claude Cahun influenced this body of work?

SW: As you know, from the artist’s book THE UNKNOWN HEROINE that you and I worked on, Claude Cahun is the artist who has been influencing my work for a while now. Cahun was incredibly well educated. Her grandmother taught her ancient Greek, so she understood the breadth of history and classical literature. She was both a performance artist and an imagemaker who used herself in her photographs. Helen and Sappho came to me originally from Cahun, from her Heroines text, where she writes about fifteen women, mythical, real and fictional. She portrays Sappho in her short essay, written to be performed as a monologue, as Sappho the Misunderstood. And Helen is Helen the Rebel.

CP: Your photograph Sappho the Misunderstood is a parallel of Helen After Troy. Both figures step out of the darkness; neither is idealized. Even with the theatrical lighting, we can penetrate the deeper questions about Helen and Sappho. With Sappho, we sense all that ambiguity around her identity and life.

SW: Sappho is misunderstood on all these levels—her sexual preferences, whether she loves men, whether she loves women, whether she loves both. These are things that have been discussed throughout the ages. And then all the mythology of her jumping off the Leucadian cliff. Sapphic lore tells us that later in life, she was in love with Phaon, a young ferryman, who ditched her for a younger woman. Supposedly, she was so upset she jumped off the Leucadian cliff.

CP: You disagree with this?

SW: Sappho would not be undone by Phaon’s betrayal. She was way too conversant with the fickle ways of love.

Sappho the Misunderstood, 33 x 22,” 2022

CP: The photograph suggests a defiance, as if she’s looking back at us across the ages. It is a tantalizing expression of a mystery that will never be solved.

SW: Yeah, I like that image a lot, too.

CP: Maybe this is the moment to ask: How does your feminist perspective inform your collaboration with Luís Branco as far as process and vision?

SW: When Luís and I work together, it’s like making a film. Beforehand, part of the research might be reading Sappho’s work, reading what historians and critics have thought about Sappho’s work, and studying paintings that have been made of Sappho through the ages. I also bring props, makeup, and outfits. We find sites, sometimes we create a staged setting. For Sappho, Helen and Aphrodite we worked outdoors in different locations in Holland and in Portugal.

It takes me a while to get into character. Part of the process becomes interacting in different spaces at different times—early morning, day, and night. What happens emerges from the connection to the site, the materials, the research, and the collaboration. In the process I do not camouflage my sixty-something-year-old persona. I attempt to embody these female icons from the truth of my body. Luís is very good at pushing me into character. We do literally take hundreds and hundreds of images to find those that are just right.

CP: There are many artists who are working with identity, such as Cindy Sherman, who take their own pictures. You know how to take pictures. What does Luís’s perspective bring to the work that you couldn’t do on your own?

SW: Our interaction, the collaboration, we call it a push-pull. He is, in essence, the viewer. People have asked why I don’t work with a female photographer. The fact that he is a man creates a kind of friction. Sometimes friction, sometimes seduction, that goes back and forth. For example, with the making of Helen After Troy, he saw what was possible.

CP: He brings an objectivity to the moment that you could not.

You describe it as cinematic or filmic, which sits within the language of moviemaking. Is that a more important language for you now than the language of performance? Have you crossed over from thinking about visual art into thinking more about the cinematic nature of visual art?

SW: I’m not trained as a performer—that’s something that’s just happened through this process, happened more and more. Taking on these big-time heroines, I must rise to be Aphrodite, to be Helen of Troy. I would say, there is this cinematic quality to the images because they are photographs. On Instagram these images operate in the public melee of social media. But when I exhibit them in a gallery, the physicality of the images allows people to really respond. The response is not just older women saying, “Wow, this is really cool!” Younger women, older men, queer people, respond. Everybody has a mother or a sister or a lover or whatever. I’m your everyday girl, but …

CP: There is a kind of surrogacy in the visual plane that you can step into.

SW: People see me not just as Helen but as me, the sixty-eight-year-old artist-performer woman who is not afraid to be seen.

Helen’s Eidolon, 30 x 20,” 2022

The exhibit On Sappho, Helen and Aphrodite will be on view October 31^st to December 2^nd 2023 at Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver, Colorado. https://www.michaelwarrencontemporary.com/

The opening reception is Thursday November 2^nd from 5 to 8pm and the artist talk will be Saturday November 18^th from 10:30am to noon. There is a concurrent exhibition of Ann Marie Auricchio’s work. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 5pm.

Helen of Troy Heroines Performance Art

Looking Back – The Helen Series, posted in Boulder, Colorado July 17, 2022

WIP – *The Helen Series*, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2022

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, 1592

I have been editing the works I accomplished in April with my collaborator Luís Branco in northern Portugal. I had rented a stone house with a waterfall, a swimming pool, and a beautiful garden. My intent was to embody Helen; Beautiful Helen, Helen of Troy, Helen of Sparta—my own interpretation of this mythical woman with a contemporary 66 year-old feminist bent. I had done my research on Helen ahead of time. I had read much of the text and mythos surrounding Helen, and I had looked at how Helen has been “painted” over time.

I began with this question – how would Helen look back on her fabled life and her epic reputation, as an older woman, when all was said and done?

Did she fall in love and lust with the sexy Trojan prince, Paris, and leave her husband King Menelaus to sail off for Troy? This would imply a certain amount of agency on her part, which I am all for. Or did Paris abduct her— initiating a violent journey and her long captivity in Troy?

*The Loves of Paris and Helen*, c. 1788, Jacques-Louis David

As either a ravishing seductress or a gorgeous victim, Helen has been blamed for the devastation and destruction of the Trojan War. Euripides, in his play titled Helen, portrays her as both a phantom temptress and a loyal wife. According to him (and others too) the Helen who stayed in Troy during those ten long years of the Trojan War was an eidolon / a ghost. And, while the ghost or the phantom of Helen was in Troy wed to Paris, the “real” Helen was waylaid in Egypt and remained a steadfast wife to Menelaus.

*Helen at the Scaean Gate*, c. 1888, Gustave Moreau

I love this Gustave Moreau image above of Helen at the main gate of Troy. Of all the Helens in all the stories, I relate most to this eidolon Helen, this doppelganger of Helen and these images below were inspired by her and by Moreau’s painting . . .

Then there are the “recovery” stories of Helen (whether she is the real Helen or the ghost of Helen) from the burning ruins of Troy by Menelaus. Euripides describes this reclaiming of Helen in the aftermath of the war in the play titled Andromache. Lord Peleus insults Menelaus thus:

“When you took Troy you failed to put your wife to death, though you had her in your power—on the contrary, when you looked at her breast, you threw away your sword and accepted her kiss, caressing the traitorous bitch, you miserable wretch, born slave to lust.”

Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 550 BC. by the Amasis Painter depicting the Recovery of Helen by Menelaus. Now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen

The beautiful amphora above displays one of the earliest figurative depictions of Helen of Troy as she is being led back to the ship with Menelaus after the Greeks conquer Troy.

*Helena and Menelaos*, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, 1816.

The “recovery” story is reenacted in Dutch painter Johann Tischbein’s painting above. Notice the dropped sword of Menelaus and Helen’s lightly draped and beautiful breasts. Menelaus intended to slay her for her infidelity but was so struck by her beauty (and her boobs) that he took her back to Sparta.

In any case, Helen does survive the Trojan war and, according to Homer in the Iliad, she returns to Sparta to live a harmonious life with Menelaus. I find this story line hard to believe. In another account by Euripides Helen is flown to Olympus by the gods after the war to live out her life as an immortal. This must have been the story line for Gustave Moreau’s Helen Glorified below.

*Helen Glorified*, c. 1896, Gustave Moreau

Whether Helen is portrayed as a shameless queen, a brilliant specter or a virtuous wife—she has been constituted and reconstituted as a figment of patriarchal perception throughout millennia. If I were Helen (or her doppelganger) after all these journeys, wars, husbands – I would be exhausted . . . and want to live out the remainder of my life in a quiet fashion alone by the pool in Sparta (or wherever).

The image below is perhaps my favorite of The Helen Series.

Helen of Troy

Who was Helen— of Troy, of Sparta, an eidolon, an elaborate male construction? – posted in Boulder, CO, March 14 2022

I love this painting above by Gustave Moreau of “Helen Glorified.” I have immersed myself in the mythology and representation of the ancient Greek heroine Helen. I have chosen Helen as one of my heroines to study and consider and to soon embody in performative photographs (as I have recently embodied Eve and Salome). I am leaving in a week for Portugal to start my performance and work with Luis Branco on the Greek heroines Aphrodite, Helen and Sappho. Helen has been portrayed as “the most beautiful woman in the world” from ancient Greek times in countless poems, plays, paintings and artworks throughout history to contemporary times. Helen has also been presented as an original femme fatale— a seductress and enchantress and the main cause of the Trojan war. I am especially fascinated by her portrayal as an eidolon; a phantom, a ghost, a replicant of Helen sent to Troy with Paris while the “real” Helen was sent to Egypt. I am interested in how this figure / character of Helen has shaped ideas of beauty, sexuality, power and of womanhood in Western European culture. Here I will discuss and post some of the images, text, mythology and critique of Helen that interest me as I try to decipher how the mythos of Helen has helped to shape historical and contemporary notions of female agency or lack thereof.

I introduce a quote from Ruby Blondell, a contemporary classics scholar, on the idea of female power in ancient Greek culture as it relates to Helen:

“Female power poses notorious problems for ancient Greek culture. Because Greek ideology and cultural practice both place severe restrictions on female agency, it is difficult for women to exercise power without transgressing the norms constituted to regulate their behaviour. Since the control of female sexuality lies at the heart of these norms, sex—more specifically, the active female pursuit of an object of desire — is typically implicated in women’s transgressions and hence in the danger posed by the female as such. Insofar as female danger is wrapped up with sexual transgression, then, so is female power. And insofar as sex is bound,up with beauty, Helen of Troy — by definition the most beautiful woman of all time — is, also the most dangerous of women. Her godlike beauty grants her supreme erotic power over men, a power that resulted in what was, in Greek eyes, the most devastating war of all time.”

Ruby Blondell “‘Third Cheerleader from the left’: from Homer’s Helen to Helen of Troy”

*Leda and the Swan* – bas relief, c. 50 – 100 AD, British Museum

Mythos and legend (and violence and lust) surround Helen a plenty. She is said to have been born a daughter of the king of the gods, Zeus. Her mother was generally considered to have been queen Leda, the mortal wife of the king of Sparta, Tyndareus. Zeus took the form of a giant swan and in some stories befriended and seduced Leda, in other stories raped Leda. Leda bore a giant egg from which Helen came forth. In other versions the goddess of divine retribution Nemesis, in bird form, is named as Helen’s mother still with Zeus the father and the egg was then given to Leda to hatch. There are several other important children born of this mythical egg. I prefer the story of Zeus taking the form of a swan (a symbol in ancient Greece of; light, transformation, intuition and grace) and then seducing the Spartan queen Leda. Alternately, in Greek literature and myth, the gods are always having their way with mortal women. In any case there is a beautiful bird, a god and a goddess, a queen, a possible rape or seduction and a giant egg involved in the conception of Helen.

The gods and goddesses (and Aphrodite and Helen specifically) are also involved in one of the presumed reasons for the Trojan war. In the story of the “Judgement of Paris” the handsome prince of Troy, Paris, is asked to judge / choose the most beautiful of the three goddesses: Aphrodite, Athena and Hera. All three goddesses offered Paris various bribes—Aphrodite offered Paris “the most beautiful woman in the world” Helen of Sparta. Paris gives the beauty prize (a golden apple) to Aphrodite and ultimately Paris goes off to find Helen. This story is memorialized in the painting below by Peter Paul Rubens. There are many repercussions from this original beauty contest . . .

*The Judgement of Paris*, c. 1636, Peter Paul Rubens

What happens next has been told in many different versions in ancient Greece texts and throughout the millennia. The famed Trojan war, if it ever really happened, would have taken place around the 12^th century BC. The ancient Greek poet Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey sometime around the 8^th century BC. Homer writes of Helen in both the Iliad and the Odyssey in one of her earliest portrayals, though much was already known about Helen in Greece at that time. The Iliad takes place during the 10^thand final year of the Trojan War and Homer places Helen there. It is not clear how Helen came to Troy; did Helen fall in love with the handsome Paris and leave her husband and country for her lover? or did Paris abduct and or rape Helen and take her to Troy? This is never made clear—is she a treacherous slut or a hapless victim? I vote the treacherous slut, at least she has some power and choice in the situation.

And what did Helen really look like?

Female or Goddess Head from Mycenae, Greece, c. 1300 – 1250 BC, National Archeological Museum, Athens

*Helen of Troy*, c. 1898, Evelyn De Morgan

And did she go happily or was she abducted /raped?

*The Rape of Helen*, c. 1533 – 1535, attributed to the circle of Francesco Primaticcio

In this story of love and seduction and/ or rape and abduction Helen is taken to Troy and suffers through the epic 10 year-long Trojan War (hated by most everyone). Paris is killed and many many others die and ultimately the forces of Menelaus (Agamemnon, Odysseus et all) deal a final blow to Troy with the Trojan horse ploy. Helen survives the war. Menelaus enters into the burning remains of Troy to kill her but is so struck by her beauty (and apparently her breasts) that he drops his sword and takes her back to Sparta. In Homer’s Odyssey Helen is back as the queen of Sparta and she and Menelaus seem to be ok.

*Recovery of Helen by Menelaus*, Attic black figure amphora from Vulci, c. 550 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich

The ancient Greek author Euripides in his play Helen (and several other ancient and modern authors) tell an alternate version of Helen’s locus and behavior during the Trojan War. Euripides tells the story that the goddess Hera was upset by the “Judgement of Paris” (when Paris declared Aphrodite the most beautiful). Hera created an eidolon, a phantom, a replicant of Helen and had the messenger god Hermes whisk the “real” Helen off to Egypt. The Helen who escaped with Paris, betraying her husband and her country and initiating the ten-year conflict in Troy, was actually an eidolon, a ghost, a look-alike. In Euripides play, the “real” Helen stays seventeen long years in Egypt remaining loyal to her husband Menelaus. The “real” Helen remains virtuous and true. The phantom Helen, the eidolon, the virtual Helen (who by the way breathes and has sex) is the treacherous slut who runs off with Paris to Troy and suffers the 10 year Trojan war. I love this idea of the double Helen, it speaks to the concept that Helen is really a construction, an idea (created by men). The idea of Helen exemplifies these constrasting values placed on women of virtue and fidelity versus sexual proclivity and treachery. Many of Gustave’s Moreaus’s paintings allude to this eidolon of Helen at Troy.

*Study of Helen*, c. 1890, Gustave Moreau

And lastly, I look to contemporary conceptual artist Eleanor Antin and her project “Helen’s Odyssey.” Eleanor Antin is a feminist fairy godmother artist for me and I admire her work tremendously, she is 87 years old now and still going strong. In her 2007 major project “Helen’s Odyssey,” Antin constructed elaborate photo tableu’s depicting various scene’s from Helen’s mythological life. Antin depicts two Helens also; one a blonde kind of ditsy fun loving Helen and the other a dark and more demonic Helen. The image I love most of all in this series is the image titled “Constructing Helen,” where various tiny male artists (poets, sculptors, painters, writers) construct a giant sculpture of Helen laying prone in all her glorious beauty. Of course, this alludes to the eidolon of Helen, the mirage of Helen, the idea of Helen, the art of Helen and her construction as a giant male fantasy.

*The Judgement of Paris*, c. 2007, Eleanor Antin

*The Construction of Helen*, c. 2007, Eleanor Antin

And I am off to Portugal March 21st to create my version, my embodiment of Helen.