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MYTHIA KOLESAR-DEWASNE: SURVIE TRANSE PERCE

As a nod to the exhibition of Mythia Kolesar-Dewasne's work, J'emballe ce précieux regard, which was intended to open on April 23rd, 2020, at the Masion Nationale des Artistes and has been postponed to January 2021, we invite you to discover her film Survie Transe Perce (1974), available in streaming courtesy of Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre.

The film will be available online from April 23rd to April 30th, 2020, on this page.

The exhibition J'emballe ce précieux regard

Filmmaker and artist, Emilia Mythia Kolesàrovà, also known as Mythia Kolesar‑Dewasne (1921-2015), studied painting, first, at the School of Fine Arts of Bratislava, then in Prague and Budapest, before obtaining in 1945 a scholarship from the Institut de France to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. After a semi-figurative period, she turned towards abstraction and, in the wake of 1968, made a number of films: Transe lucides (1971), Transe humance (1973), Transe parence Ideana (1973), Survie Transe Perce (1974), Transe modulée (1975), Transe uranienne (1973‑76), Transes fusion (1976), 4 Éléments (1977‑78), Trans fer. The films explore woman's creation in a physical sense, giving rise to the pictorial event of the film. They were shown at various institutions in France and abroad and participated in debates on the artistic processes of female artists. Kolesar‑Dewasne also created J’emballe ce précieux regard (1965), a film-sculpture that assimilates pieces of film into a three-dimensional object, an original piece and the first of its kind. She was in a creative and romantic partnership with the artist Jean Dewasne.

The exhibition traces the artistic path of this artist in dialogue with the debates of her time via archival photographs, films, drawings and paintings.

The exhibition will be held from January 14th to March 28th, 2021, at the Maison Nationale des Artistes.

The film Survie Transe Perce (1974)

"Survie Transe Perce was dedicated to the Cuban artist Hessie, whose work consisted in embroidering on large unbleached canvases, with threads of colors, geometric drawings, repeated with obstinacy. I went to her house, in the countryside, on the edge of a lake, in her mill surrounded by meadows, and here is the scenario: I filmed her lying in a narrow black boat on the grass; she sewed herself into this boat, the wire crossed from one side to the other to bind herself. The image generated a fantastic effect.
The idea was that embroidery, a highly feminine activity since Antiquity and the Middle Ages, is accomplished on the woman's own body...
Survival Trance Perce, the English title of this film, screened in a New York gallery, participated in debates on the process of women's creation: the invitation card attests to this. Other projections took place at the National Museum for Modern Art in the Centre Pompidou."
– Mythia Kolesar, "Transe Perce Survie," in Environnement Mythia: du profond intérieur, Nogent-sur-Marne, Maison Nationale des Artistes, 2012, p. 50-52.

The only reel of Mythia Kolesar's film Survie Transe Perce that has been located comes from Hessie's family. It is an 8mm coil which has not been kept in good condition and has been greatly deteriorated by moisture. Throughout the film, visual alterations occur in the image, sometimes forming a sort of floating frame on the original image. The original film is a portrait of Hessie by filmmaker Mythia Kolesar, Hessie's friend. The soundtrack that accompanies is composed of poetic fragments read by Hessie in English.

A standard quality DVD was used for the projections made since 2015. In summer 2018, Bill Brand restored the film and transferred it to a digital file. The restoration reinstated the original speed of the images with a high-definition resolution and corrected the distortions of the sound. The "ruin" of the original film seems transfigured by the passage of time.

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