ᵒⁿ ʰᵒᵘˢⁱⁿᵍ ᵃⁿᵈ ⁱˡˡⁿᵉˢˢ

Ophelia Arc

on unica zürn, i guess:

September 2023, I was on a big Hans Bellmer kick. This came after reading Mike Kelley’s The Uncanny, the exhibition text for his 2004 Tate Liverpool curated show. I was no stranger to Bellmer’s perverse, charged, and tangled dolls, but it was his photographs that really took me back. Human flesh cohered to a singular mass, bound and compressed—like an indiscernible bundle of meat that somehow still exude warmth [(Mondobongo, 2012)]. It wasn’t like Jana Sterbak’s Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic [(Sterbak, 1987)], with its cold slabs of fresh carnage against skin just shy of collapse. Bellmer’s flesh was closer to human—but not quite. Bare, reduced to what Agamben might call “mere life.” [(Agmemben, 1998)]

For whatever reason, I didn’t question the mass. I knew it was human—Photoshop and AI weren’t on the table in the early 20th century. A year later, I circled back to that research and questioned the subject in the photograph, this mass wasn’t just any body—it was, of course, a person. No surprises there: it was Bellmer’s partner, Unica Zürn. An artist and writer in her own right. Come to find out, she threw herself out of Bellmer’s window in 1970 following a stint of unraveling and hospitalizations.

Her visual work, reminiscent of the diaristic ballpoint pen drawings I've grown too familiar with from my middle school days on tumblr. confessional portrayals of angst and anguish I had no business seeing at the time. Maybe if I didn't come in with this pre association, I'd appreciate them more but looking at them now, evokes the same feeling I get when I see a 4 loko, nausea and a twinge of embarrassment, how childish.

Anyways I'm not here to speak ill of the dead, overlooked and unwell.

What really piqued my interest of Zürn’s work was her writing, or more so a writing.

“Since yesterday I know why I am making this book: in order to remain ill for longer than is correct. I can slip in a fresh page every day... My better half, who is clever and wise, wants me to remain ill for sometime, for it knows that one can gain from an illness such as mine. My worst half wants me to return to my few duties. Yes, I feel that it is time for me to show some consideration for my surroundings, which, incidentally, are not large... Perhaps I should now quickly smuggle another couple empty pages into this book? Forgetting one's duties has for me the taste of sweet cream.” [(Screenshot from a 12 page german-to-english translated excerpt of Unica Zürn’s House of Illnesses, uploaded by musicbloak on scribd)]

The desire to remain sick,
To stay ill
To remain in the hospital, the brick mother
How nauseating, embarrassing and childish

the host inside the guest inside the host:

i am a carcass with you and stil i fear i'll be nothing without you

so i harbor you in another room within this house of illnesses
conjoined in a way deemed inoperable due to the likelihood of demise.
fear rules this
the fear of what is left when bifurcated

i conform to exist around the space you take up
i bring you to every function
and hold the door open for you as you pace a few steps behind,

an attempt to keep you at arm length

but even still i let you into my room at night
to share this bed together
within this house of illnesses

M:

i’m in the house of an address you don’t know
i hear the echo of your voice

your shouting
your scream.

I startle myself, my throat hurts the next morning
I am tired of carrying you with me everywhere I go

Ophelia Arc (b. 2001) is a research-based multidisciplinary artist currently based in Providence, RI. Working across sculpture, video, and installation, Arc explores psychoanalytic themes rooted in personal experiences and memory. She earned her BFA from Hunter College and will be receiving her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025. Arc’s work has been featured in publications such as Artspiel, ArtNews, ArtNews China, Textiel Plus, and Visionary Magazine. Her work is included in private collections and has been exhibited in galleries in New York and beyond, including 81 Leonard, Kates-Ferri Projects, No Gallery, Marinaro, and Collarworks. Arc’s thesis exhibition will open in May 2025, followed by a solo show at Lyle’s & King in New York City in 2025.

@cease.and.perish