Carmit Hassine: Singing over the Bones

”We too ’become’ as we pour soul over the bones we have found. As we pour our yearning and our heartbreaks over the bones of what we used to be when we were young, of what we used to know in the centuries past, and over the quickening we sense in the future…”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves Carmit Hassine (b. 1977) presents sculptures that transpire in-between the physical and the abstract. They stand upright, as elements combining three formal-material worlds: sculptural bodily volumes, industrial structures, and geological phenomena.This hybrid cross highlights the transience of the human body versus the durability of engineered machine structures or natural objects, such as rocks. A closer look at the works reveals traces of a pressure applied by a human hand alongside smooth surfaces that appear machine-made. The symbiotic relationship between body,machine, and nature repeatedly gives rise to physical mutations—new combinations,distortions, and transformations, representing the human body’s way of adapting and adjusting to a changing environment.

In her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés maintains that logical formulations or rational arguments will prevent us from touching on the depths of the psyche, particularly the female psyche; access to the psyche will be made possible through the language of images and symbols that emanates from our inner world—through dreams, works of art, legends, and myths.The book describes an old woman who collects the bones of dead animals. After assembling an entire skeleton, she sings over the bones to flesh them out again into the creatures they once were. According to the book, the psyche contains internal powers of regeneration and healing waiting to awaken and embark on a journey to reconnect with those deep, forgotten areas of the self, realms of imagination and prophecy that are realized in the psyche’s quest for its full essence.

In the current exhibition, Hassine sets a territory, connecting the viewer to the sense of dwelling in the specific body, regardless of its capabilities or limitations. In her work, she draws on the innate feminine powers of intuition and on the senses, eliciting an awareness of the self and its secrets. The materials and forms are charged with meaning and energy, like those concocted in the act of alchemy. In a space resembling a laboratory, a mercury-like sculptural mass grows on a ladder, serving as a springboard and a support at the same time. Another object, a Kryptonite of sorts—a fictional mineral which saps Superman’s powers— appears in a maternal Pietà pose. The connection between the amorphous forms and the metal structures is reminiscent of (medical and political) rehabilitation and support systems in which the external structure holds the internal substance. The external structure’s support of the organic mass, which strives to breach its boundaries, only reinforces the tension between exterior and interior.

Hassine’s sculptures forge a new syntax for structures that shift internal force to the core of the self. The human presence seems to exist within them, as a possibility of life in states of emptiness and transience. As in the act of bone collecting, they attest to the healing process and to compassion inherent in the work of art.

Installation photographs: Tal Nisim