Interview: Hélène Battaini
Luca Curci talks with Hélène Battaini during CONSCIOUSNESS, second appointment of ANIMA MUNDI 2024 which took place in Venice, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

As a visual artist, my artistic approach is using a diversity of mediums, exploring painting, sculpture, embroidery and watercolor. My artistic work is deeply rooted in engaged reflection, addressing political, sociological, ecological and feminist issues. My creations are a reflection of a constant dialogue with the world around me, resulting from my experiences and observations during significant travels, notably across the Middle East, from Turkey to Egypt, via Lebanon and Sinai. The essence of my works lies in the fusion of contemporary themes with ancestral artistic techniques. I immerse myself in traditional artisanal skills, revitalizing them through my own contemporary interpretation. This exploration of ancestral techniques is not limited to a simple aesthetic approach but constitutes an act of cultural preservation and a celebration of the richness of traditions. A crucial dimension of my artistic commitment lies in the responsible use of materials. I strive to recycle and integrate materials made available, thus placing my work within a perspective of social and ecological responsibility. This cohesion with contemporary issues reinforces the scope of my creations by establishing a link between artistic, aesthetics and the concerns of our time. In short, my artistic practice aims to create works that transcend the boundaries between artistic disciplines, eras and cultures. My interdisciplinary approach and commitment to fundamental questions reflect my deep conviction as an artist, helping to broaden the horizons of societal reflection through visual expression.

Luca Curc – What is art for you?
Hélène Battaini – For me, art is a kind of personality that induces someone to see everything in life in
a different way. Art is a way of seeing the world and a way of considering ideas in a particular way.
Art is not being afraid to try to do something you feel inside your gut. Art also analyses society and operates for progress. One needs to be anchored enough in society and also able to take the distance to be able to analyze it. The artist needs to think ahead, and be smart, to see how to propose progress. Art is communicating this progress or an idea in an aesthetic way so the ones who look at it will feel something. The feeling can be just liking or not, it can be also something impossible to describe and explain, a feeling, an intuition … Sometimes the message the artist wants to communicate is clear and the people who see start to think differently or new things, that is also art. Art is considering the world in a non-expected way.

LC – What’s my background? What is the experience that has influenced my work the most?
HB – I studied Italian art and literature in Montpellier, France and in Venice, Italy. I lived in Venice for three years. Then I went to live in the Middle East and had two children there. The experience of motherhood is what influenced me the most. It influenced my time and my attention which are the two most important things one has in life. I focus more on what is really important. My way of analyzing the world is different, I can see clearly what is the question, what is the problem, what needs to be done to make an evolution better. My travels across the Mediterranean and the Middle East really influenced me too. I also love to study also across poetry, languages, physics, sociology and spirituality.

LC – Did my style change over the years? In which way?
HB- My style was always to follow my inspirations and ideas exploring different techniques according the my needs. So my style is always evolving, it changes with me. My style is research and experimentation! I work by collections and I make a few pieces in each collection. My artworks are very different from one collection to another but my style of following my thought is always the same. It’s more a philosophy about art than a style like we usually think a style is.

LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
HB – Being an artist today is very tricky because we must do everything by ourselves. All the marketing, communication, accounting, etc. And this let fewer time for the actual creation than I would like. Just as self-business persons. But one cannot just create a piece between publishing advertising and accounting and being expected to create a masterpiece in the small amount of time dedicated to the creation. I believe that asking the artist to do everything themselves can weaken the power of creation. The artwork would be totally different if one could just paint for 10 hours a day without interference. I believe the status of artists should evolve so artists would have more time for thinking and creating because that is the most important part of having smart, free and independent art. We need to be able to keep our minds sharp to produce quality artwork. Nowadays artists are both absolutely necessary and victim of a full capitalist organisation of the society, where everything is a product, and where the only value is money. I believe capitalism is killing art by suffocating the artists. In my country, I’m an activist for a minimum wage so artists can afford a living even when they don’t sell enough to make a living, because this is the situation for the majority of artists and it’s not linked to the quality of their artworks and their talent.

LC – Do visitors’ suggestions enrich yourself and your art?
HB – Sometimes yes. Sometimes the criticism is really encouraging and supportive. But I know that in the mind of people art is something that anyone can give their opinion on. And everyone believes they can criticize somebody’s art on the base of whether they like it or not. I don’t believe that being liked by most of people is a good sign, and I think it’s impossible to make everybody like your art. So most of the time I’m just trying to find something that will make me grow in any critic.

LC – In which way the artwork presented in our exhibition is connected with the exhibition’s theme?
HB – The exhibition theme was « consciousness » and the artwork I presented to the exhibition is named « Cairo ». I wanted to « speak » about Cairo, the capital of Egypt. After visiting Cairo I had very varied feelings. It took me few months to digest my impressions and understand what I experienced. I analyzed my pictures and my trip and I realized my thoughts were balanced between two opposite feelings. My feelings were different from what we usually hear about Cairo. So I wanted to represent this. Cairo is about People. It’s about the very old past, it’s about the glorious history and the misery. Politics wrong choices and deep love. It’s about the people… People love their city but may feel helpless. Government money is not spent where it is needed. So there is always a mix between wisdom and chaos. Cairo represents Humanity is a large scale. Cairo is all the good and the bad of us people. We are nothing different from the people in Cairo, they are our past, our present and our future in a very honest, raw or brutal way. I believe everyone should go to Cairo and one would learn about himself. Cairo is a capital and it is crucial to open everyone’s consciousness.

LC – Can you explain something about the artworks you have in our exhibition?
HB – The artwork I presented « Cairo », is a collage. It was made recycling papers full of paintings I had from the beginning of the same collection. It was about the idea of representing people out of only one gesture in the paint. As a symbol of our way of communicating nowadays. I wanted to express that it
takes only a little effort, like only one gesture, to change from an anonymous crowd to actual people with an identity. I started painting then I glued many cut papers to represent my friends there in Egypt, and also to give the sensation of the distance and the desert. And then with the papers I saw the shape of a big city building in front of me. The layers of the collage are perfect to express what I wanted the people to feel. The layers of history of the people of Cairo.

LC – Did you enjoy cooperating with us?
HB – Yes I did. The communication was easy even with the distance. And your team was efficient. And I was happy to come back to Venice to exhibit after I studio there, it was very symbolic to me and I was happy to share this with my children!