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The first year, when Hélène Guétary started dressing up people in
rags and painting their bodies in exotic colors before photographing them with her partner Patrice Casanova, it all seemed a bit weird.
When the population of her personal album reached more than thirty creatures, it got a little more weird.
But when she started to tell us that her creatures feed on giant blue radishes, are born in gigantic eggs, and that their queen
communicates her knowledge to them via sacred potroasts, it finally seemed that Guétary was getting slightly out-of-hand.
Five years later, the Natural History of this world apart is entirely written, and Hélène has even gone so far as to draw skeletons,
and reconstitute jewels, clothing, tools, and fossils.
We, the spectators, are delighted, having just waltzed into this thrilling universe known as "Unknown Species".
42 years after "Beauty and the Beast, what would have Cocteau thought?
Additional surprises continue to materialize ... 90 costumes, 40 drawings, an entire scenario, a few dozen objects and skeletons,
and 45 giant photographs (60 X 40 cm) realized with the experiental camera furnished by the Polaroid Corporation, who has become quite
enthousiastic about the project. Like extra-terrestials never before imagined, the Unknown Species take their place on Earth,
in the imagery of Hélène Guétary.
In some way, Hélène has invented anthropological fiction. For the past years, she has been concentrating all her energy to transform fiction
into reality, with the use of all the means of of communication available : photography, sculpture and casting of composite materials,
film and drawings.
While other versions of fiction like those of Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs or Franck Herbert depend upon one medium only, Unknown Species
relies on as many means as possible, as if caught in a state of "archeological emergency".
This diversity of the various mediums of her observation is disconcerting and, most likely, represents the basis of the modernity of
this tale, which finishes by the following words :
" Tut, tut, child, everything has a moral if you can find it."
The Duchess of Wonderland
Thierry de Beaumont,
L'Atelier
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Guerriers
Hélène Guétary
Polaroïd
50 x 60 cm
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