The task of art, writes Roland Barthes, is not (as is commonly held) to express the inexpressible, but to unxpress the expressible. Barthes’s play on words comes to me à propos Anneli Nygren.
While many of Nygren’s works invite reasonable ponderings in line with critical theory, the essence of her oeuvre and the effect it has on viewers remain largely the domain of mystery. I use these volatile terms – essence, mystery – with conscious (in)discretion, aware of the risk of involving the artist as well as myself in a whole mythology of artistic singularity. Hence, also, the polysemous pertinence of my reference to Barthes, who, however relentless a critic – of mythology, of ideology, of artistic authorship – yet made it a point to leave the mind ajar for unexpected intellectual (and sensual) disturbance, for the pleasures of the unknown, the anti-dogmatic and as yet unintelligible.
If ever there was a contemporary artist who merits flirtation with the phenomenology of enigma, it is Anneli Nygren. Yes, Nygren makes videos. Yes, her work has been shown at such venerable venues as Chiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (notably in the form of a “retrospective” in 1994) and Helsinki City Art Museum (in a 1998 exhibition, which also produced a dainty little book on the artist). But if you ask me, to simply call Anneli Nygren a video artist would be to reduce her to a polite image of contemporary art comme il faut. Nygren is both less and more than a video artist.
I once referred to Anneli Nygren as the ”Mona Lisa” of Finnish contemporary art (a banal analogy, granted, but you will get my drift once you meet the artist). Neurology, I gather, claims to have finally unveiled the secret behind the Mona Lisa: when viewed at a distance, Leonardo’s creation smiles softly, when up close and personal, she frowns. This is simple neuroaesthetics, they say, and I’ll leave it at that. But the discovery does make some kind of weird sense in Nygren’s case. I, for one, do not intend to get too close for comfort. Such scrutiny will inevitably take place when the artist is no longer with us, but meanwhile I prefer to embrace the enigma and flirt back at that artful soft smile – from a mannerly distance.
But there are some aspects to her artistic persona that do call for discreet examination, for Nygren is so conspicuously… well, different, as an artist. It is rather in spite of her self that she has come to represent the venerable institution of Contemporary Art. Nygren is, as it were, a folk artist. Yes, such a queer thing exists: a folk video artist. Not only does her work express a persistent fascination with the Popular (as opposed to the conceptual), it is also devoid of professional pretention, decidedly low-tech, and not originally intended for public consumption as “art”. Rather, it seems to have emerged out of instinctive necessity – and simple fun.
When it does reach a sophisticated audience (which is increasingly the case since the 1990s), the initial impression is one of uncanny directness and naiveté – inducing reactions from downright irritation to nervous laughter – or a knowing giggle, embracing the campy absurd. Enter, thence, the alchemy of concept: aesthetic directness translates into intellectual distance, as an initial, detached a- or be-musement quickly morphs into the insider’s wink. At the same time, and more interestingly, the homely (the familiar, the easy) makes way for the unheimlich: the uncanny, the uneasy.
Lacking formal art education, Nygren has been making pictures – and music, and stuff – since her early teens (did she ever stop being, at bottom, a creative fan?). She also writes, makes drawings and publishes ”magazines” – alas, with minimal circulation – that draw freely upon all the resources of this one-woman act. The magnitude of her oeuvre may sound imposing, but, take my word for it, doesn’t look the part. There is an unusually clear continuum (both stylistically and thematically) from her naturally awkward childhood scrapbooks to her current work under the more self-conscious rubric of art.
As someone tending (by nature, it seems) toward the Gesamtkunstwerk, Nygren is a kind of female Warhol – minus the pretentions of a Factory. Not that Nygren doesn’t have her own entourage of Beautiful People: the coterie of this self-made-woman-artist consists of her dear Aunt Orvokki (one Ms. Björkesten, who sadly passed away a few years ago), occasional relatives and friends, and of course her Barbie Dolls – a director’s dream, they strike the fiercest poses, yet display no diva antics, and are cheap.
Of course Nygren had never heard of Andy Warhol – let alone his Factory or Interview magazine – when she started making pictures and editing magazines way back when (we do not actually know how old she is; she does not volunteer to tell us, and we do not insist on knowing. But we do have an early issue of her fabulous Tytin Lehti, dated 1971).
So Nygren’s artistic concept bends happily from the strictures of an intellectual-critical stance; her ”stance” is rather an ironic happenstance, it entertains rather than scrutinizes. Even though just about everything in Nygren – beginning from her multiple personas (as Anne Lee, Tytti, Kitty, Cicca, etc.) and the very notion of performative artisthood they engender – acquires the form of a citational masquerade, there is little if any ideological discourse to spoil the fun. (Ideological, Barthes reminds us, sides with straight, non-inverted.) Yet, far from a simple fanatic embrace, something cracks, grates, disturbs the funny image – breaks the studium, Barthes would again say. Amidst all the sentimental gaiety, a wound opens up.
Nor is it simply a question of camp, the hip outsider-insider position it affords us viewers. Of course our initial camp support had a great deal to do with her attaining cult status in the 1990s. Then, as now, her work invited artful appreciation by a chosen few, offering that curious combination of intellectual Verfremdung and affective empathy. Nygren’s work actually brings to mind Barthes’s musings on Bunraku – an absurd enough reference, for her work has precious little to do with the formal traditions of Japanese theatre. Barthes, drawing from Brecht, describes this form of alienation, or expository, anti-illusionistic representation:
”[It] separates the act from gesture: it exhibits the gesture, it allows the act to be seen; it exposes at once the art and the work – –. [T]he tackily clinging substances of Western theatre are dissolved: emotion no longer submerges everything in its flood but becomes matter for reading – – . A total spectacle, but divided, Bunraku excludes improvisation, doubtless aware that the return to spontaneity is the return to all those stereotypes which go to make up our ‘inner depths’. Here we have – – the reign of the quotation – –.”[1]
To be sure, the reign of the quotation is Nygren’s domain. And improvisation is all too artsy a tool for her purposes (this is Studios’ Actor rather than Actor’s Studio). There remains, most importantly, the mystery of affect. It seems to arise from two basic factors, at creative odds with one another: first, the campy pleasure of being in the know (that shared giggle), and the more nervously blissful (dis)pleasure of not quite ever getting (to the bottom of) it. The latter affect stems partly from the position of voyeuristic complicity that Nygren – unwittingly, I suspect – offers the viewer.
For it is also herself, in her awkwardly attractive photogenie, that the artist gives us perspicuous glimpses of. That “self” does not quite reflect the polished presence of Artist/Director/Occasional Actor; instead of conceptual cameo, we get the queer charisma of a somewhat geeky (hence arresting and all the more lovable) human being – entertaining the role of filmmaker who does the role of artist – but with a real (as opposed to mock) sincerity that all but does away with the intellectual quotation marks that had emerged to structure our experience.
* * *
In this DVD collection, we are treated to a selection of 16 films ranging from the grainy-textured 1977 vehicle Tytti Tyttelin in Christmasland to 2005’s I’ll be Betrayed. Nygren’s work is best savoured visually, but I would like to say a few words about my current favourites. (I say visually, but hasten to add that the eerie music and sounds – played and sung by the artist herself – are always as arresting as the visual scenarios.)
The earliest film, starring young Anneli as Tytti Tyttelin (a name that might translate, roughly, as ”Girli Girlein”), has no sound, highlighting the artist’s background in home movies. This is a sublime piece of nostalgic nygreniana. Note the charmingly cocteauesque moment of filmic magic in the beginning, as writing appears to take place ”backwards”.
The classic Laundry Piece (1992) could very well be analyzed theoretically[2], but I dare say its true virtues lie beyond the grasp of theoretical concepts. The film pokes delicious fun at classical performance art (it is ”signed” Yoko Ono 1963), but the quirky homage isn’t revealed until the very end of the film. Instead we are lured to suspend our disbelief and be mesmerized by Ms. Björkesten’s Oscar-worthy performance as the ever so lovable, chatty housewife making a spectacle of her laundry.
Those of us who grew up watching TV in the eighties will revel in the dated intertextual references, which can be quite whacked – for example, when ”Don Johnson” (the actor of Miami Vice fame) is replaced by ”Cliff Barnes” (the character of Dallas fame) in the mix-up narrative of Order (1993), a film which takes a loving look at the Finnish public’s embrace of American TV-stars.
Another classic is Rendez-vous with Destiny (1989) where Nygren herself does an unforgettable job as the power-dressing, phone-dependent ”Alexis” (yes, courtesy of Dynasty). But at least as compelling for today’s viewer is the archaic technical device of creating dialogue with the use of a simple tape recorder: one can hear the artist pressing ”play” every time the other character (on the phone, played by herself) is supposed to deliver her lines. Now there’s an auditory punctum for you, Mr. Barthes.
Phones themselves are indeed crucial to the Nygren aesthetic – perhaps because they are ”photogenic” markers of modernity, but probably even more because they are an economic (and somewhat anti-social) form of social interaction. To be sure, the presence of a phone will bring endless dynamism to a woman-woman scene.
A propos of phones, Internatio[na]l Phone Art (1996) is another rare gem from the vaults of nygreniana: a documentary. Here the author formally disowns authorship, seeking to shed light on an art genre that has waned away with the disappearance of immobile phones. The art form in question is, of course, doodling. I was shocked to find a vast array of my own vintage doodles displayed here – under a pseudonym, thank goodness! – for I no longer recall supplying the artist with any (though I must have, and no wonder, for I was once an avid if not hysterical proponent of said art form).
In Woman’s Work Never Ends (1997) we have yet another instance of compulsive repetition: the Hysterical Homemaker, forever dressing her table.[3] The work suggests, at first glance, a ”feminist” side to Nygren’s oeuvre. The inverted commas are crucial, though, for what we are served here is, again, ironic citation: caught in the act is (imaginary) performance artist Teresa Peters (aka Terhi Penttilä). It is telling that the film is based on leftover footage that only became an independent work by chance – as a ”feminist” afterthought. A more recent work, the pithy Miss Inflandia (2001), could likewise be seen as a critique of beauty pageants (for many, a desperately inflated form of pop culture). But it takes a devoted fan to do the ”research” involved and serve up the quotations, these ”pageant paradoxes”, with such gusto.
Perhaps the most poignantly instructive film in the batch is Ma Relation avec Anneli Nygren (1998). This is essentially an oblique auto-portrait – and, as such, the best textual introduction to Anneli Nygren by Anneli Nygren. It may help the viewer to know the story behind the work. A Helsinki-based curator was invited to give a public talk on ”his favourite artist”, and the result was a paper read by him, on film (that is Jari Björklöv playing his stern self for a change), but actually written by the artist. The witty confusion of authorship, combined with the formal manner of presentation, makes this self-reflective video-essay a compelling commentary on museal-scholarly practices while providing an illuminating, perplexing view into this particular artist’s mind.
* * *
In a sense, Anneli Nygren’s is an utterly romantic art, for it allows the viewer to savour aspects of authenticity and originality, notions that most art today more or less consciously evades. In Nygren, artistic originality becomes an issue – perhaps even the issue – precisely because one realizes so quickly that this is not the (in itself rare) case of an artist who achieves authenticity, but the (even rarer) case of an authentic who achieves art. It is this ambiguous – artful/artless–fabricated/real– art/life – wavering that makes Nygren’s work – which can never quite be separated from her enigmatic persona – so utterly fascinating.
In this world of articulate agendas and sophisticated statements, I’m glad there is you, Anneli Nygren.
Harri Kalha
Ph.D., scholar of art and visual culture
References
Barthes, Roland, 1963/1972: “Preface”. In Critical Essays. Translated byRichard Howard, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Barthes, Roland 1977: “Lesson in Writing”. In Stephen Heath (ed.): Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.Barthes, Roland, 1980: Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography.Translated by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang.
Kalha, Harri, 1998: Lähiöiden Hollywood, Helsingin kaupungin taidemuseo, Helsinki.
Kalha, Harri, 2004: “Doing Kiasma with Freud”. In Eija Aarnio & Marja Sakari, eds., Love Me or Leave Me, Kiasma Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art & Like, Helsinki.
Note: A slightly different version of this essay was published in SQS – Journal of Queer Studies, 2/2007 (see http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/sqs/sqs2_07/sqs_contents2_07.html)
