Between June 29^th – July 2^nd 2022, SomoS presents the solo exhibition First Sweet Truth by American multidisciplinary artist Jessina Leonard, featuring meticulously executed Black and White photography, accompanied by sound- and video installation. Constituting a dialog between photography and female mysticism and literature, it takes the visions and texts by German nuns in the late Middle Ages as a starting point for a visual journey, exploring the human impulse to depict what is beyond representation.

Jessina Leonard further developed her First Sweet Truth project -ongoing since 2018- during her six-month artist residency at SomoS, supported by a Fulbright study and research award. Its beginning lies in the monastery of Helfta, where Leonard stayed for three months. It is in this very place, in Eisleben (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany), that in the 13th century Gertrud von Helfta and Mechtild von Hackeborn witnessed miracles and holy apparitions, capturing them in what turned out to be among the earliest surviving examples of female literature in the West.

As explained in their texts, their aim to share the details of their encounters with the divine was confronted with a lack of vocabulary. The inherent failure of speech and writing in the face of mystical experiences rendered them unable to describe what they saw, or felt, with existing words.

One could wonder, “How can you put on paper an experience that is outside of language?”

For Leonard, this question sparks a conversation with the medium of photography, which is also condemned to fail to represent reality because of the subjectivity of the person holding the camera or the camera itself. The photograph can only be a biased window into the world.

As she states,

How do we describe that which is beyond representation? What lies at the edge of our vision? For a medium that has an indexical relationship to reality, much has been theorized about photography’s relationship to the invisible. In my work, I look at how photography’s failure – the limits of its representation – might be the very source of its revelatory power.

As we walk into the exhibition space, we first discover a little silver gelatine print of a sleeping horse in a field. This photograph was made by Sister Christiane Henson (the current head sister of the Monastery of Helfta) when she was a child, about 40 years ago, and given to the artist during her collection of photos and materials surrounding the history of the place. More than just a photo, it represents the memory of an almost mystical quest. As a little girl, Sister Christiane Henson tried to capture the image of a sleeping horse; but every time she would get close the horse would wake up and run away. When she finally managed to take the picture and develop it in her father’s dark room, she found out that the horse’s left ear popped open, meaning that it was awake the whole time.

This intense desire to get as close as possible to the things we cannot grasp, or see, is the heart of Leonard’s project. How do you make a photograph that is impossible to make? But also, what really is the definition of “impossible”? The medium of photography has by nature an immediate relationship to reality, but “reality” continues after the edge of our vision. And some things that we previously thought were doomed to remain invisible have been brought to light, such as the black hole photographed by Kate Boumans.

The black and white photographs displayed on the walls are the artist’s interpretations of the texts in which Gertrud von Helfta and Mechtild von Hackeborn try to describe their visions. With a minimalistic approach, the artist creates a sense of spiritual presence. The grass catching fire, a bee laying on a person’s tongue, a plate of honey, a broken mirror, the shadow of a hand between two boulders… Every image suggests something being there, or once there.

A part of the exhibition space is constructed as a separate space, where Leonard presents “Lumin prints.” Known for its magical aura, this photographic technique was popular with some of the early spiritualist photographers who thought they could use this medium to capture otherworldly manifestations. Technically, Lumin prints are realized by exposing silver gelatine paper to light, letting it “scan,” or fix “the unfixable” on paper. It is essentially a “picture of light.” A picture of something that can’t be seized or fully comprehended. For this series, the artist chose a particular window through which one of the women allegedly had an apparition.

The way the mystics of the monastery of Helfta talk about visions can be said to have a connection with the visions of photography. Many photographers and art theorists wrote about the medium using mystical terms. Such as the famous theorist Roland Barthes, who developed the idea that to really see a photograph you need to close your eyes. It is also in the origin of the word “mysticism” itself (from the Greek “to close”, “to conceal”). To close your eyes in order to see better? Jessina Leonard seems to agree. With her quiet, contemplative images, she invites us to simply experience the feeling they may evoke, instead of trying to understand them in every detail.

---

First Sweet Truth solo exhibition by Jessina Leonard
Opening reception on Tuesday, June 28th, from 4 to 8 pm.
Open Wednesday, June 29^th – Saturday, July 2^nd 2022, 2-7 pm, and by appointment.
Entry as always free
SomoS, Kottbusser Damm 95, 1.0G, 10967 Berlin (U8 – Schönleinstraße).

---

Facebook Event Page / Press releases DE / EN

This post is also available in: German