Artist Helena Minginowicz is fascinated by the fleeting nature of life. Inspired by the way we strive for immortality despite our delicate bodies, she now turns single-use materials—from plastic bags to paper towels—into precious artworks to highlight the fragility of life. Amidst our constant search for longevity, she tells Alix-Rose Cowie how she’s trying to celebrate the beaty in the transience of things.
There have been periods in Helena Minginowicz’s life when she didn’t paint. She was still making things—designing clothes, creating textile art, or even baking—but it wasn’t the same. “These were the worst times of my life, because it felt like I didn’t have a voice,” she says. Minginowicz was an introverted child who grew up around adults; other children seemed strange to her and she didn’t connect with them. Instead, she would talk to herself, or have conversations with her parents. Very early on, drawing and painting became a language for her to express what was going on inside her head. “Making something with my hands was a very natural way for me to say anything,” she says, “And it’s still that way, I still have so many thoughts which I cannot speak with just my mouth. I see something in my mind, a kind of picture, and I must find a way to show it to others. Painting is the way I can materialize my feelings, my thoughts, things I’ve seen and what I thought about them.”
Seeing faces in a pair of knees, a horse crying shiny tear drops, or the disturbing image of a mouth full of little sheep in place of teeth, Minginowicz’s imagery, though surreal, all comes from real life experiences and the thoughts that arise while she’s processing them. There are certain themes that she’s always grappling with, like the vulnerability of being human. One day in her studio she saw a plastic grocery bag on the floor and for the first time noticed the words “Be Healthy” printed on it. She was struck by the significance of the sentiment on such a flimsy material. Thinking about how disposable things are designed right from the start to be thrown in the trash, she saw metaphors for human life and relationships. “I fell in love with those silly sentences on disposable things, silly fruits on paper towels, and it makes me cry sometimes because they are so fragile, they’re so nothing,” she says.
Minginowicz now paints directly onto single-use materials and overlooked objects—plastic bags, squares of paper towel, doormats, skincare sheet masks—turning them into precious artworks. A lamb with a ladybug on its nose, the very picture of innocence that we feel programmed to protect, she paints onto a delicate paper napkin that can all too easily be torn or taken with the breeze. It provokes a strange sensation looking at the works knowing this. “I love this feeling,” she says. “Canvas is harder, it’s bigger, and much more impressive. In contrast, this paper napkin is like a joke, but we are something like this.” So much of what humans are preoccupied with is attempting to stay young, live forever or at least be remembered. “We are trying to be canvases, but we are paper towels!” Minginowicz laughs. “It’s so touching to me that we still try to be immortal.”
Before taking to the canvas with an airbrush (or to the bottom of a takeaway coffee cup with acrylics) Minginowicz makes swift sketches to get her ideas down: “Just a few lines in black pen.” She leaves sketches unfinished to save her energy for the painting, working straight onto the material. “It’s a risky process but I love it,” she says. “The painting is alive and still feels fresh. I don’t like to over paint something until it looks tired.” The process of painting sometimes feels like a confrontation for Minginowicz; one with her own expectations for the image but also with the canvas itself, which she calls a “new creature” she must contend with to imprint her inner world onto it.
The animals in Minginowicz’s works are the same you might find printed on toilet paper packaging: “extra soft” puppies. Inspired by the Old Masters she studied in art history, she also uses animals and the symbolic meanings assigned to them to translate her messages—swans for beauty, doves for peace, horses for freedom. “It’s a very old code of symbols that I borrow from, and mix with my own language of painting, which is then seen through the individual lenses that we each view the world through.” Everything in her paintings is included intentionally to tell the viewer something or as a hidden secret for herself.
In “One night stand,” strands of a lover’s hair left behind on a pillow after they’ve gone curl into the shape of a wild horse. It’s about how even the briefest encounters can leave us with something so beautiful. The hair is something weak, just a trace of the person, but the horse is a symbol of something vital: beauty, freedom, passion. “When you think about a good relationship, you think about being with somebody forever, but this is a reflection on how short meetings can also hold so much meaning for us,” Minginowicz says.
It’s immensely pleasing for Minginowicz when other people crack the codes in her artworks, but she’s happy for people to read their own stories into her subjects as long as she’s satisfied with how she’s told hers. Hopefully, in our relentless quest for longevity, her paintings are a reminder to accept our fleeting fate and acknowledge how beautiful our attempts are at claiming “I was here.” Somebody somewhere thought to put a tiny strawberry on a piece of paper you’ll use to mop up a spill.
