Re-inventing Helen : Eleanor Antin’s Helen's Odyssey

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of Eleanor Antin’s photographic series Helen’s Odyssey (2007). Helen of Troy is a classic example of the historical phenomenon of women being excluded from representing themselves. For thousands of years, in many realms, particularly the visual art, essentialist representations of Helen continue to be produced by disembodied and all-seeing entities. Helen’s Odyssey, as suggested by Betti-Sue Hertz, is a reclamation of Helen of Troy and her visual records. The discussion of this paper will begin with a focus on how the materiality and corporeality displayed in Helen’s Odyssey affect audiences’ engagement with the works. Analysis of this section will draw on the theory of queer feminist durationality proposed by Amelia Jones. The second section will investigate in what ways Helen’s Odyssey advocates and facilities the entanglement between the self and other. The third section will focus on the subjectivity formation of Helen in the series. Drawing on the concept of feminist corporeal-materialist aesthetics elaborated by Marsha Meskimmon, this paper argues that Helen’s Odyssey is a project aiming to dismantle master narratives and is designed as a series of experiments, a series of artistic Gedankenexperiment, where situated, entangled, partial and dynamic material‐discursive bodies become materialised.