Are you stressed? Struggling to sleep? Worried about your weight? The chances are that if you’re reading this, as a busy modern city-dweller, you’re at least one of those things. Art may not often deal with personal neuroses, but British youngster Helen Carmel Benigson confronts them head-on.
In a Technicolor one-room installation, she overwhelms you with uncomfortable modern anxiety. Each wall is covered in imagery that deals with physical ideals. Immense sumo wrestlers square up and reset in a loop playing on one wall, a woman receives a foot massage on an Indian beach on another, all this overlaid with screenshots about depression, weight loss, sleep patterns and period cycles. A computerised voice repeats words like ‘anxious’, ‘stressful’, ‘fat’, ‘complain’, ‘really worried’. More sumos wrestle in a video, which is projected on to milky white water in a birthing pool in the middle of the room. Next to it are shelves lined with gynaecological equipment. There’s a pink treadmill in the corner, and the walls are plastered in images of pedicures and nipples.
It’s a hard room to be in – stifling, uncomfortable, awkward. It’s clear that Benigson’s art is dealing with issues around female body image, but the sense of dread she has created is almost universally relatable. Anxieties, worries, weight loss – these are things we all deal with, things that we encounter in targeted online advertising, in conversations with friends, they’re constants in our lives. But Benigson’s installation works not just because of the subject matter, but also because of her strong aesthetic sense – she’s condensed down a very contemporary series of conditions into a visually striking installation. You’ll just be happy to get out without turning into a quivering emotional wreck.
Eddy Frankel