Imagination dwells in the dark

When artist Fiona Lutjenhuis (Zevenaar, The Netherlands, 1991) was young, her father would build worlds in the stories he told her. Incomprehensible structures with expansive vistas. Visions of a future in which only a chosen few would survive. Fear and anticipation would go hand in hand. Because Fiona’s family belonged to the chosen ones. The stories her parents believed in, and with which Fiona and her sisters grew up, were shaped by elements from Christianity, belief in extraterrestrial beings and science fiction. Stories filled with aliens and ghosts, not only inhabiting another universe, but who were also present here on earth where they kept close watch on you. Within five years, Fiona’s father believed, The Last Judgement would take place. Best behave. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be taken to the new world. You would be left behind.

These stories, Fiona learnt later on, were part of the worldview of a small group of people who called themselves ‘Malva’. They formed a close-knit community, a cult, in which social and religious control was strict. There was an inside world and an outside world. In the inner world, Fiona was always afraid: of the beings who constantly watched her and of the unfathomable vision of the future that was said to take place. But in the outside world, she also felt lost. Compared to her, her classmates seemed to lead entirely different lives: carefree and unburdened.

As long as Fiona can remember, she has been drawing. In her diaries, she made drawings and comics based on her everyday life. The drawings weren’t literal depictions of what she experienced, instead, she used a secret language. By working with symbols, she ensured that others could not easily understand what her comics were about. Through the images that emerged in the act of drawing, Fiona created a kind of counterweight to her father’s stories. She recalls finding it strange that there were no pictures accompanying the narratives. No imagery, like those found in Bible stories or fairy tales. If he was speaking the truth, Fiona reasoned, then surely there must have been images as well? But there were none, only words.

In addition to processing her daily life, drawing also brought an opportunity to create new worlds. By doing so, she placed herself within a tradition: some of the most famous works in art history are religious artworks, created to make faith accessible to those who could not read. And to render comprehensible what is immeasurably vast, such as a miracle or a God. Illustrated Bibles, altarpieces or stained-glass windows: images have the power to communicate in a very direct way and to move people. To this day, Fiona continues to create comics. She uses her self-made paint in a graphic style. Her imagery remains a secret language, a coded system made of symbols. Sometimes, they are legible, but often, they are not. She has no desire to make paintings that can be understood at a single glance.

Instead, she aims to evoke a feeling through her art. A feeling that intrigues and unsettles somewhat. A feeling which can make you feel lost, while at the same time draws you in even deeper. It makes me think of the way in which theologian Rudolf Otto described religious experiences more than a hundred years ago. He called these experiences a mysterium tremendum et fascinans: a mystery that is at once awe-inspiring and fascinating. An experience that is overwhelming in two ways: both terrifying and repellent, yet at the same time deeply intriguing and alluring. For me, personally, Fiona’s work is about these kinds of experiences, which are vast and ultimately unfathomable, which she tries to navigate through her paintings.

Both in her loaves and in her paintings, Fiona shows ingenious plaiting. In Agnus Dei, plaited loaves can be discovered on and behind the altar table. When I ask her about this, she refers to the work’s primary source of inspiration. In addition to the famous medieval altarpiece, there has been another, even more significant, influence: a horror film, the British classic The Wicker Man (1973). The term ‘wicker’ refers to the act of weaving. A wicker man is a mythical figure: a giant constructed from interwoven twigs and branches. People, often convicted criminals, but sometimes also innocent people, were said to be locked up inside a wicker man, after which they would be ritually sacrificed by setting the structure on fire. In the film, this ritual takes place on a Scottish island, whose inhabitants have abandoned Christianity in favour of a pre-Christian nature religion. These kinds of sacrifices are meant to appease the gods. Whether the ritual of the wicker man ever truly existed remains a matter of debate. But the stories persist to this day, not least because of the famous film.

In an article about The Wicker Man, a BBC-critic wrote that it will burn its way into your unconscious. When I read this, I thought it was a very apt description for my own experience with horror films. Images, whether I had seen them or made them up, that refuse to let me go. Precisely because they horrify and fascinate me at the same time. These words seem equally fitting to describe the lasting impact of Fiona’s experiences in her younger years. The words uttered by her father became the images in her mind. Images she has no choice but to live with.

Fiona recalls rituals from her youth in which offerings were made to aliens, so that when they arrived in their UFOs, her family would be spared from the apocalyptic end of the world. In Agnus Dei, small floating houses appear in several places, symbolizing these UFOs. The top part of the painting shows the interior of these houses. Inside, conjuring rituals unfold that look otherworldly, unsettling, unheimlich. Images that nestle in the unconscious and never let go. For Fiona it feels as though her childhood has been sacrificed by her parents. Their belief-system was central to everything: everything else had to yield to it, leaving her little room to simply be a child. Her mind was filled with the visionary images and stories of her parents, leaving little room for her own imagination. By revisiting her childhood experiences through her art, she reclaims agency. Taking control back into her own hands.

Under Fiona’s own direction, she doesn’t only make new images of her childhood memories, but also creates space for resignation and even curiosity. It is almost incomprehensible that Fiona can speak about her childhood with compassion, about her father and the terrifying images she still carries. She does so in a calm and deliberate tone, carefully choosing what to share and what to keep to herself. And she can laugh about it, even when the things she shares are almost too strange to believe, as they often were in her youth. Yet she doesn’t consider her family to be crazy, nor does she judge those who today seek solace in cults.

That is the way she sees it. These are people who struggle to deal with reality. They seek a safe haven and think they can find it in a cult or within a closed community, like the one her parents belonged to. They are afraid of the unknown and find ways to fill that darkness, sometimes taking it to extremes. Fiona wants to find a way to understand this, not to justify it, but to examine it further. She studies several religions, learning as much as she can and then incorporates elements – in her own way – into her work. The artworks that emerge from this invite a similar reflective attitude. Nowhere is this a harsh reckoning with her troubled youth; above all, it is a way to deal with it, to go on with life and to share the experience with others.