Turning tragedy into art

by Giulia Gasperoni (South Africa)

I didn't expect to find South Africa

The further away I drove from Cape Town and its nourishing scenery, the drier the landscape became, offering a more fitting background to my feelings. The end of a relationship is never easy, but my divorce had brought about a series of visa complications that were making me feel even more unwanted and foreign. As if my life in South Africa until then had only been legitimated by a man and a piece of paper. So here I was, heading as far away from my problems as possible – at least for the weekend. My destination was Nieu Bethesda, a rustic little village in the Eastern Cape, known for having been the home of outcast artist Helen Martins. I had read about Martins before, or ‘Miss Helen’ as she was known by the villagers, and I was instantly drawn to her tragic life and visionary art. A tough childhood, dysfunctional personal relationships, then a coerced homecoming to take care of her sickly parents and, finally, self-isolation and depression had been ingredients for the grievous recipe of her life. Life that ended in suicide after much agony and sorrow. Miss Helen’s legacy to the world is the Owl House, her childhood home which she transformed, from the crude environment she had known growing up, to a mausoleum of eccentricity - a metamorphosis that would take her 30 years to complete. Knowing this, however, would not prepare me for what I was about to experience. Immediately before arriving at the village, the tar road turned into gravel, a scene ever so typical for small dorpies in the Karoo. A hollow and knotted tree welcomed me, setting the tone for my haunting visit; I stopped to take pictures, still unaware of that. After parking my car and leaving my belongings in the room I had rented for the night, I finally set out to find the Owl House. As I walked, I could sense the prying gaze and studious attention of the few locals; a lonely girl with a city car and an accent they had only heard in American gangster movies is not exactly something they would see every day. But their inquisitive attitude was replaced by an amused smile, lacking a couple of front teeth, when I told them I was looking for "Miss Helen-se huis", 'Miss Helen’s house', in my basic Afrikaans. After paying the small entrance fee to an equally amused lady, I entered the museum and felt immediately that heavy atmosphere that could only stem from a tormented soul – present or past. The décor was unsettling: intense colours, trinkets from other decades, and of course Miss Helen’s statues, from the iconic owls with glass-filled cavities for eyes, to other mutant-like creatures that would remain in my memories for a long while. I was the only visitor and after a bit I started developing a hovering feeling of oppression; I even found myself startling when I heard a creaking noise! Nevertheless, gripped by a morbid fascination, I moved on to the outside area which she had baptized Camel Yard. There, tall and slender camel statues stood eerily amidst a procession of cement pilgrims facing one direction in perfect stillness, as if a biblical Medusa had just left the premises. The statues’ ambiguous smiles, their glossy eyes and the aura of melancholia triggered something deep inside my soul, as if my own sorrow was merging with hers. It was like a punch in my stomach. I could hardly believe that this woman, who had suffered so much more than me and had been dead for many years, understood and expressed exactly what I felt. Miss Helen had created her own, dark Mecca. A disquieting place of worship, a noir ensemble of disturbing though harmless monsters, way before Tim Burton’s time. Where people had failed, her statues would not. In the end, her life had been so miserable that she chose to retreat to her own reality. Isn’t that something we all can comprehend? On my way out, I was not just crying for myself, but for all the women misunderstood, mistreated, and alienated.