Biography 021
Christiane Fichtner - Biography
I first met her on 4 May 2007 in the gallery Oberwelt in
Stuttgart. She was opening an exhibition of photographic self-portraits under
the name of Christiane Fichtner. Her small-framed glasses seemed like one
of the accessories from her self-portraits. In the pictures, she takes on
different identities that are inspired as much by diverse, freely constructed
biographies as by her own. Which version of Christiane Fichtner was the one
before me? Throughout the evening we talked about art that is not complete
until a narrative is added, about artworks which are not balanced but move
in a world of thought where they become unlikely but real fragments of an
unknown mythology or an incomplete theater play which perhaps had once been
lived. In the end, Christiane was not much more real than I was. I liked that.
I met her again 25 May 2014, by chance. She was celebrating
her 40th birthday together with some friends in a café near Lake Zürich.
There were about a dozen women there of roughly the same age and with a very
similar physiognomy. They all introduced themselves as Christiane Fichtner
and laughed loudly when they saw my reaction. Christiane was no longer the
same. She could bounce from an elated high to an icy distance in a matter
of seconds. “It is a serious matter, Ésèpe. The many facets
of Christiane Fichtner are only getting all the more real.” A student
filmed the party. The documentary was intended to let audiences experience
this melting of art and life. As far as I know, it was never finished.
Some weeks later I heard some news that soon shook the art world and even
the general public: Fourteen women artists had committed collective suicide
in the gallery M. in Zürich in the night of 5 July 2014.
I was devastated. It was especially disturbing that fourteen different methods
of suicide had been used, as if following a systematic plan. The papers conveyed
their horror and began looking in vain for the cruel cult that had to be behind
it all. Art magazines expressed their bewilderment in an abundance of theoretical
and provoking articles. It was fascinating and shocking at the same time to
realize how far this game of identity had gone in the end.
But Christiane had survived, and nobody knew about it. She wrote to me. It
was a touching letter from a desperate woman hiding under a new name. It was
an urgent cry for help. I visited her in Sortino, in the hinterland of Syracuse,
Sicily, where she had withdrawn. She had aged many years in just a few weeks.
She talked slowly. She had finally discovered painting. I spent two months
in this sunny refuge with her. We painted landscapes endlessly and called
each other the two little Cézannes. No portraits, only light, shadow,
arid rocks and shimmering olive trees. “Christiane is dead. Call me
Helena, that’s what I always wanted to be called when I was a child.”
The name suited her. Slowly she began to drink again from the source of her
own life.
Helena died yesterday. Or was it the day before? How many people will have
a trace of her in their memory? What time is it? Since the last 2800 years,
I occasionally lose my sense of time. One thing I do know: She was but one,
the child Helena.
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