Naked truths: Hannah Wilke in Copenhagen - Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland

Upstairs, Wilke's work needed no explanations, for illness is a context everyone fundamentally understands. In this case it is the battles with cancer Wilke and her mother both faced. A stone Romanesque arch led into an intimate space, where one discovered Wilke's diaristic series of self-portraits, B.C. ("Before Consciousness" of her cancer, 1987-90). These powerful, boldly colored watercolors are de Kooningesque in their painterliness, though they are far more personal and psychically penetrating. Each painting abstractly represents Wilke's face as it gradually changes to reflect her emotional and physical shifts.

Wilke's final series, Intra-Venus, continues in the same vein as her earlier performalist self-portraits, but the representation of her cancer now makes the effect painfully ironic. Large, color photographs portray Wilke's once familiar and beautiful body in hospital surroundings. Obviously ill, she appears calm and characteristically searching for the subtle humor and beauty in the serious situation. The left-hand photograph in the diptych Intra-Venus Series #4, July 26, 1992/February 19, 1992 is a half-figure portrait of a bare-skinned, hairless Wilke. Her hands, one pricked with an IV, cradle her face, while her clear eyes emit inner beauty. The photograph to the right shows Wilke softly enveloped by a blue blanket, her eyes closed as she turns inward. This series is not about documenting the horrific lymphomic effects on the artist's deteriorating body, but instead imparts an inner spirit and tremendous peace.

After seeing this later work, it is impossible not to reevaluate Wilke's earlier performalist self-portraits. This profound shift is the retrospective's greatest accomplishment, for it affords one the opportunity to perceive Wilke's work as a continuous and coherent project. Clearly, the artist's youthful beauty was not the primary force behind her public/private performances. Rather, her art, as a whole, consistently emphasized life - its sensuality as well as its ironies, tragedies, and struggles. This intimate, lived experience serves as the starting point that infuses her art with an often disquieting provocation. The ensuing discomfort, although always intellectually and socially challenging, is first and foremost visual in its impact. The result is some of the most courageously moving art in decades.

On the way downstairs, as I was leaving the Art Center, I came across a "permanent installation" - a kind of jukebox that played samples from a variety of artists' performances. As an added bonus, there was a track of Wilke singing her song "Stand-up" (1982).(8) The song rallies the listener to "Stand up when people put you down/stand up and dance above the ground/you've got to stand up, stand up." Wilke's confident voice pervaded the room, and even when the song ended, her message of strength and celebration remained.

Notes

1. Interview with Chris Huestis and Marvin Jones, "Hannah Wilke's Art, Politics, Religion, and Feminism," New Common Good, May 1985, 1.