The Brooklyn Rail

Helène Aylon’s genius was like an alchemical process that has undergone many transmutations, reaching higher states of purity, refinement, and subtlety. Coming from an Orthodox Jewish tradition, her work lived in these “empty spaces where / a female presence has been omitted.” Her cardinal elements were the fire of the women’s Shabbos candles, and water of the negel vasser (a wash bowl used by devout Jews) to restore the soul upon rising. Aylon’s work was about restoring the feminine soul in life, art, and nature. This was a subtle realm, not one dominated by a male clergy or a macho men’s art fraternity. She was an artist theologian charting her own course, with a highly transformed feminism uniquely her own, drawn from silent ancient wellsprings.

Exquisitely curated by Rachel Federman, this mini-retrospective distills the essence of each of Aylon’s main series of works in keeping with the artist’s vision. The first room celebrates Aylon’s role as a light-bringer. My Eternal Light: The Illuminated Pink Dash (2012) hung in the artist’s apartment, over her mother’s candlesticks. Churches and synagogues share the concept of the eternal flame; in Judaism, this Ner Tamid may exist in an electronic form. Seeing it here, we feel very much like we are entering the artist’s personal tabernacle.

On another wall hangs the painting Silvery Pane (1971), from her early series “Elusive Silver.” Silver is the metal of the alchemical feminine, and she said this series led to her search for "a mystical female presence." Departing from the mark making of male-created masterpieces, she chose a process which involved laying acrylic on aluminum and Plexiglas. These works spontaneously created themselves and are all about flux. This magical silver painting resonates deeply and is alive, and mutable. Made as conciliatory gesture to her highly religious mother, The Book That Will Not Close (1999) rests delicately in a vitrine. The artist placed velum over the pages of the five Books of Moses using a pink highlighter to mark passages of human and divine cruelty, while ever respectful of the prohibition regarding defacing a sacred text. The splayed pages fan out, making the book impossible to read, challenging one’s beliefs in a more mysterious way.

In rooms two and four of the exhibition Aylon’s “sacs” act as a symbolic thread and leitmotif. Here, knotted pillowcases hang from the ceiling in a reimagined section of Aylon’s Bridge of Knots (1993/1995/2006), an image to which we will be reintroduced later in videos. Sacs, an intentional misspelling of sacks, referenced for Aylon pillowcases often used by refugee women fleeing to transport precious belongings. The pillowcase is a uniquely feminine symbol, and here, some carried inscriptions of dreams and nightmares for the planet, and soils to be healed.

This second room also functions as a photographic presentation of Terrestri: “Rescued” Earth (Earth Ambulance) (1982). Inspired by the nuclear activism at the Women’s Peace Camp in Britain at Greenham Common (1981) and Helen Caldicott’s call for a “revolution for survival,” Aylon launched her Earth Ambulance, a repurposed moving truck painted with a Red Cross. Aylon and a dozen women began a cross-country odyssey in 1982 starting at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and ending at a United Nations rally for disarmament in New York. In between, the “Women’s SAC Caravan” stopped at twelve Strategic Air Command military bases. Aylon’s use of the acronym “SAC” denotes both Strategic Air Command and the mantra “survive and continue.” In photographs we see sacs being filled at each location (Terrestri: “Rescued’ Earth”Filling the Pillowcase]), packed inside the van (Terrestri: “Rescued” Earth [Inside the Earth Ambulance]), and unloaded in New York (Terrestri: “Rescued” Earth [Earth ‘Paintings’] in front of the Isaiah Wall, Ralph Bunche Park, New York) (all 1982). At each SAC site along the journey, the women wore tallitot (Jewish prayer shawls traditionally worn by men) with the printed slogan “Survive And Continue….an anti-war ceremonial.” These were designed by Aylon, and silkscreened images of twelve knotted sacks replaced the traditional stripes and knotted fringes.

Repurposed military stretchers from a 1989 P.S.1 performance lean against a wall in the gallery. It is hard not to think of Joseph Beuys’s survivalist The Sled (1969), but in Aylon’s art the body to be transported is the Mother Earth. Aylon’s decade of performances beginning in 1980 took her across the United States, to the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and Japan. Much like Beuys, she united international activism with spirituality and ecology.

A standout from the exhibition’s third room is a watercolor diptych pulled from a largely unseen series, Watercolors: Hiroshima/Nagasaki (1990). This small masterpiece is like an essence that has undergone the most delicate refinements and made this viewer long for an entire exhibition devoted to this series.

The final room of the exhibition features two videos on a loop: two sacs en route (1995) and Bridge of Knots (1993). Both feature sound by Meredith Monk and the pillowcase sacs and water. Aylon describes two sacs en route best:

In 1985, on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedies, I floated two sacs filled with earthly ingredients that were gathered by young Japanese students. The two sacs floated en route to these cities—one towards Hiroshima and one towards Nagasaki.

In this poetic video we see the sacs float on placid water, descend over a waterfall, navigate rapids, and arrive at their destinations. A printed overlay asks the viewer, “What would you take? What would you carry?” in your sac. Two sacs en route was shown on the Times Square Jumbotron, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 1995.

Bridge of Knots documents the first installation of Bridge of Knots at the Knoxville Art Museum in Tennessee in 1993. Bridge of Knots was installed again in 1995 at the Berkeley Art Museum, timed to coincide with the screening of Two sacs en route in New York. In the video we see the same tendrils of knotted pillowcase reimagined in the second room of the exhibition. This video is especially moving for those who know the artist died during the early days of the COVID pandemic. The pillowcases are knotted like those of a Jewish burial shroud. It is as though the artist has written her own epitaph across the video.

The Kabbala
tells us
there's a
way to tie

those very last
white cloths
that cover
a person.

The knots
must be
tied with
three loops,

because
the God letter
"shin"
has
three
loops.

Here we can celebrate her genius, spirituality, and deep humanity. In the best of all worlds this exhibition would travel. Helène Aylon’s visionary work is more needed now than ever in our perilous time.