Noële Baker - building bridges between here and beyond

Departure, Death as a rite of passage, are the themes recently explored by Genevese artist Noele Baker following the loss of loved ones. The current exhibition at the gallery La Ferme de la Chapelle presents this personal yet universal study of human destiny.

A female image that recurs as a thread throughout her work, has haunted Noële Baker since the early stages of her career as a sculptress. Embodied with generous curves and often integrated with fine long rods, this womanly figure represents in turn goddess or a messenger from another world. In the artist's 2006 project commissioned by the Red Cross' training centre Ecogia, she also used it as a figure head.

In her next exhibition, Noële Baker presents several series which each pay homage to a close relative recently lost. The theme of death, understood here as a departure or a transition to another world, is at the core of the sculptures. Each piece has been adorned with elements of memories in the form of poetry, quotations and written fragments, all of which are directly related to the deceased. The series that she created for her mother who was also an artist, a French teacher and a poet, takes the form of long ribbons made from metallic ligatures. One extremity of the ribbon hangs on the wall and unrolls to the ground, creating a symbolic path of life, or perhaps, a metaphorical ladder that rises towards another dimension. The insertion of small terracotta figures appear as guardians of this symbolic journey. Quotes from her mother's poetry written on PVC sheets are also included within this series.

As a tribute to her father Frank Dorsay, watercolourist, Noële Baker worked on mylar, a material traditionally used to make boat sails. She cut out diptychs and painted them in soft colours, reminiscent of her father's landscapes. On these diptychs, she has reproduced fragments of writing in memory of her father’s manner of communicating subjects dear to him. The sail material is an allusion to sea travels, another metaphor for the journey of life and death.

A third series pays tribute to one of her mentors who had a great impact on her artistic career, and who liked to say that life should be seen from above in order to be able to grasp its meaning. She thus created several long metallic rods of nearly 2 meters high from which a female image emerges, embodying the leitmotif of the artist's work.

These series constitute a coherent continuation in Noële Baker's artistic research. Her intimate work is always marked with much modesty, which makes the message conveyed even more powerful.

Valérie Gache,
ELLE magazine, november 2007 (translated from French)