Seen on Campus: Hellen van Meene

In Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene’s Untitled #68, a woman appears to sleep inside a couch. Eyes closed, her face looks tired yet tense, like she is caught up in a bad dream. The work plays with visibility; the woman is illuminated by light, but the cushions balance on top of her like they are meant to her from the world as she rests. Behind the couch is complete darkness; this couch appears to be not in a home but in a vacuum. It’s an otherworldly scene, even more so due to the woman’s soft white dress with lace detailing that has a spectral quality. She is a lost thing, fallen in between the cushions like a coin or a safety pin. Is she supposed to be found?

Untitled #72 features a woman lying on the grass, her beautiful and bright orange dress spread out underneath her and her head sitting in a yellow bowl filled with water. In the bowl, her red hair floats and swirls outward like a crown or a mane. The gold detailing of her dress matches the golden color of her red hair as it reflects the light. Though the scene is mainly one of warm colors, it feels cold and eerie. Her eyes emotionlessly staring off to the side, it appears almost as if she is dead, her limp body placed there posthumously to create this scene.

A woman sits on the ground with her legs bent in front of her in Untitled #140. The work is one of high contrast; one side of her face is bathed in light, making her eyelashes look almost white, and the other side is fully shadowed. The woman holds a jar of red jam, her right hand delicately dipping inside with her index finger. Light hits the jar in her hands perfectly, like what she is holding is special, important, and even holy. Despite the jam that is smeared all over her face—including on her eyebrow above her closed eyes—her lips are in a slight smile. She looks serene, like this is a moment of worship. With her simple shirt, lack of pants, and messy hair, the scene is private and intimate, yet powerful. 

Van Meene is a Dutch photographer who studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and briefly at the College of Art in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art. Her work is held in many prominent public collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and MoCA Los Angeles. She is the recipient of The Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship (2016) in the categories of fine art of photography and science, as well as the Charlotte Köhlerprijs (1999) and the Startstipendium (1998). She is represented by James Freeman Gallery, London; Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo; and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. She currently lives and works in Heiloo, Netherlands.

Hellen van Meene’s photographs are on view in E. H. Little Library.

— Isabel Smith ’24