Putting Ourselves Into Words with Helen Acklam

Helen asks; As artists, how do we verbalise the embodied experience and the essential subjective undertaking of yielding meaning? How do we put things into words?’ As artists who navigate and process grief, we encounter assumptions made about our work, one of these was encountered by Helen when she received the response ‘You’re a confessional artist now’.

Helen says; My on-going project ‘What It Is to Be There’, began in early 2020, when I worked with a grief therapist for a year and made work. It was a body & mind process, where I was free to say what I wanted to her, and made work intuitively in response to the grief I was processing. The dilemma developed around how to speak and describe the works and experiences in my practice. About six months ago, during a conversation with another artist about this subject, I encountered this response; ‘Well, you’re a confessional artist now’. This interpretation of my work set off a whole journey of thought, including some anxiety and indignation - but the research this has triggered has become a really interesting area within my practice, questioning; How do you tread that line when your work is about your lived experiences?

I also began wondering:

• When is work ‘autobiographical’ and when is it ‘confessional’?

• whether ‘confessional’ is a term only used for women, and what terms are used about

  male artists making work about lived experiences?

We held a discussion, exploring when and how work is considered ‘autobiographical’ and when is it ‘confessional’; Whether ‘confessional’ is a term used only for women in this context, and what terms are used about male artists making work about lived experiences.

Some references that arose:

•Rachel Holmes, ‘My Tongue on Your Theory: The Bittersweet Reminder of Everything Unnameable’

•Joanne Freuh, ‘Erotic Faculties’

•Lauren Fournier, ‘Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism’

•Maggie Nelson, ‘The Argonauts’

•Regina Bendix, ‘In Search of Authenticity’

•Melissa Febos, ‘Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative’