![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Witch3_TaliaLink_20x300CMYK.jpg\")
Talia Link, Witch no. 3, 2012. Digital collage, Inkjet print. 112 x 110 cm. From the Witches Project. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n Talia Link, Witch no. 3, 2012. Digital collage, Inkjet print. 112 x 110 cm. From the Witches Project. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n
How the figure of the witch endures in culture – and how one artist is reclaiming her power. The fantasy of witches among us as cunning, powerful women in possession of mysterious powers has captured the imagination across continents and centuries. Looking at the way the figure of the witch is deeply entrenched in the folklore of Western culture, it is often linked to her ability to both change her appearance and to predict \u2013 and direct \u2013 fate: the Moirai of greek mythology and the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth were menacing precisely because of their prophetic ability to augur destinies (the word \u201cweird\u201d derives its meaning from the old english \u201cwyrd\u201d meaning \u201cthat which comes\u201d, like the german \u201cwerden\u201d). From Ceres, Sirens and Harpies of antiquity to Norse legends and medieval yarns of pagan women crouching over cauldrons whispering maledictions and flying to congregate for Black Mass, the image has frightened and fascinated everyone from commoners to kings, rulers and popes, and later, writers, thinkers and political activists.<\/p>\n Yet the witch\u2019s most substantial power would seem to be the unending ability of her image to endure: shape-shifting, in fact, to accommodate the leading beliefs, philosophies and culture of whichever time of her \u201capparition\u201d, even if the culture happens to be that of celebrity worship.<\/p>\n Consider Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s recent Superbowl half- time show as test case in how the traits attributed to witches were historically portrayed. Her performance was frenetic and sensational, but publicists sought to have images of the singer at her fiercest removed from publication, deeming them \u201cunflattering\u201d. Naturally, the move backfired, and the internet memes which quickly circulated accentuated her muscular physique\u00a0and ferocious expressions, typifying many of the prejudices long projected on to so-called witches: a figure of unbridled sexuality, the witch is often described as taking on the appearance of a beautiful and strong woman, an alluring temptress; when underneath the fa\u00e7ade of beauty lies an unsightly old hag.<\/p>\n Of course, none of this is to suggest that Beyonc\u00e9 is herself a witch. But if shape-shifting and time travel are in themselves two very powerful supernatural faculties, what bestows the notion of the witch with its force? Is the figure of the witch, a mighty, albeit fictive fixture of culture, actually a succubus that derives its power from its dominance over our fantasy? Do we in fact summon the witch time and again, invent her history and conjure up the threats she poses in order to fulfil our own needs and serve specific \u2013 chiefly political \u2013 purposes?<\/p>\n The work of young Israeli artist Talia Link, shown here, makes use of the role witches play in the collective imagination and reinvents them as harbingers of a new femininity. Laden with symbols imposed, adopted and appropriated, her witches are stunning, awe-inspiring, monstrous and seductive simultaneously, reflecting aspects of our culture but also the way we think of and portray women in the media. Link calls for a reclaiming of the history of the witch, demanding a just representation for the women who were considered so powerful that they had to be eliminated \u2013 a practice that started in the middle ages and endured for centuries, peaking in early modern history and which still, to some extent, endures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Brief History of Witch Hunting Folk belief in the reality of witchcraft was indeed widespread in the middle ages, but it was vehemently denied by the Catholic Church; Charlemagne had specifically outlawed the old practice of witch burning, dismissing the practice as pagan in itself, owing to the fact that witchcraft was originally viewed by many early medieval Christians as a pagan superstition. It wasn\u2019t until the publication of the \u201cMalleus <\/em>Maleficarum\u201d <\/i>(the \u201cHammer of the Witches\u201d) by the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer in 1486, that witchcraft was widely accepted as a real danger. Backed by a papal bull from Pope Innocent VIII, the \u201cMal<\/em>leus\u201d <\/i>negated the prevailing orthodoxy that witches could not surpass the power of god with their rituals, and instead instilled the belief that Christians had an obligation to hunt witches down and kill them.<\/p>\n Inevitably, their persecution became far more brutal following the publication of the \u201cMal<\/em>leus Maleficarum\u201d: <\/i>witchcraft was then accepted as a real and dangerous phenomenon, and witch hunt hysteria swept over europe. evidence used to convict and execute many thousands of alleged witches was entirely fabricated. But whether they were real or not, witches were a political necessity, their suggested threat serving both as a distraction from real plight and as means to eliminate resistance.<\/p>\n Descriptions of the traits of witches and their crimes drew on existing traditions of rural paganism. Though practicing pagan \u201cmagic\u201d was not exclusive to women, a combination of existing popular mythologies, fear of the communal role women played in society and\u00a0superstition regarding older women in particular (older, post-menopausal women didn\u2019t have to bear children, were often widowed, and enjoyed certain freedoms that placed them too close to men) were used to establish their marginalisation and enabled jurists and rulers to easily blame them for coincidental phenomena such as poor harvests, dying cattle, stillbirths and inclement weather. Only with the advance of the enlightenment with its creed of empirical reason, scepticism and humanism did europe\u2019s unquenchable thirst for what was essentially femicide finally subside \u2013 only to reappear, albeit briefly, in the New World, culminating in the infamous Salem witch trials.<\/p>\n Not all publications on the topic of witches were incriminating, however. In 1862, Jules Michelet published \u201cSatanism And Witchcraft\u201d (originally \u201cLa Sorci\u00e8re\u201d), <\/i>a book on the history of witchcraft. In his account, Michelet postulates that medieval witchcraft was an act of popular rebellion against the oppression of feudalism and the Roman Catholic Church, a rebellion that nevertheless took the form of a secret religion inspired by paganism and fairy beliefs. Though highly romanticised and embellished, Michelet\u2019s account is openly sympathetic to the sufferings of peasants and women in the middle ages.<\/p>\n While exploits of superstition may be fathomable in the murk of the dark ages, the practice of vicious, dogged and irrational persecution of subgroups is not something the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, modernism and the information age have managed to prevent; on the contrary. And while the existence of witches rather serves as fodder for sitcoms like \u201cBewitched\u201d and \u201cCharmed\u201d than for inciting mass hysteria these days, the folkloric image of the witch still endures; it man- ages to retain its power and fascination.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is a Witch? In other words, to paraphrase another great female thinker, one is not born a witch. <\/i>The witch is a construct, the scapegoat on to which society projects illness; they are figures that symbolise insubordination and the transgression of normality, posing a threat with their nonconformity.<\/p>\n The crucial revival of the figure of the witch took place in the 1970s, primarily in activist contexts, when precisely these seditious traits were being appropriated and turned on their heads. The witch became a potent symbol of feminist as well as gay struggles in europe and the US, a path that extends to the witch\u2019s appropriation by the queer community today, where the potential of the image\u00a0 to speak to various strands of non-conformism is recognised.<\/p>\n This reanimation has led scholars to rewrite the obscure history of witch hunts, highlighting the roles of healer, midwife and botanist which her figure also combines, of a woman engaged in an un-materialistic relationship with nature and spirituality. These important (and overlooked) dimensions of the figure, though cited by historians before, were not reinstated and celebrated until the late 1970s, to serve as inspiration for feminist and neo-pagan groups committed to questioning identity and taking action on political and environmental issues. In short, the witch has become a symbol for political potential and social alternatives. It also drew many to embrace witchcraft as a way of life marking their own refutation of societal conditioning; the neo-pagan and Wiccan communities are steadily growing.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that the marginalisation and subjugation of women, or misogyny, are things of the past. Both prevail today, and feminine alterity is still frightening to many who would rather police women\u2019s presence and access to society, as the recent scandalous failure of the Irish government to issue an official apology for the abuse that was the rule in the Magdalene Laundries shows. The practices that took place at the Catholic-run laundries, which housed \u201cfallen women\u201d, echo the writing of Silvia Federici, who situates the institutionalisation of rape and prostitution, as well as the heretic and witch-hunt trials, burnings, and torture at the centre of a methodical subjugation of women and appropriation of their labour.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stealing The Witch Back Perhaps the most notable example is Mary Wigman\u2019s \u201cHexentanz\u201d (Witch Dance) first performed in 1914. In \u201cWitches: Hunted Appropriated empowered Queered\u201d, curator and writer Anna Collin asserts that Wigman, the mother of expressionist dance, \u201cused the figure of the witch to underscore her interest in mysticism, as well as her desire to shake up the male dominated avant-garde. Wigman thus re- establishes the witch as an intrinsically feminine and alien figure… both frightening and fascinating and resolutely indomitable.\u201d<\/p>\n But from sorceress to neo-pagan goddess to healer and activist, with so much baggage in tow, can the figure of the witch still take on new meanings which are relevant and appealing to a younger generation? Based in Tel Aviv but describing herself as a citizen of the World Wide Web, artist Talia Link has recently exhibited her \u201cWitches\u201d series \u2013 consisting of seven individual witches, a four-minute video and a gold-plated ring \u2013 that was the outcome of ex- tensive research on both the witch as symbol, and symbols in general. Her prerogative: a quest for new femininity by way of re-appropriation via projections, emblems and symbols, digital image processing and… Beyonc\u00e9.<\/p>\n I started by looking into different symbols and the affiliations they represent: cultural, ethnic, ideological and religious,\u201d Link says. \u201cSymbols are signifiers of belonging, either chosen by their wearers or forced upon them by others. From punk to fascism, everyone uses symbols to communicate to the rest of the world what group you belong to. Then I asked myself, but how does it relate to the world? What can be done with it?\u201d<\/p>\n Collecting images of countless signifying objects and markers, adapted, projected or im- posed, from African lower-lip plates, tummy- tuck marks, a yellow badge, hula hoops, Indian face paint, a belt rigged with explosives, a dirndl and many more, Link eventually decided to create a new mythology, a universal story that unites all these symbols into one new figure \u2013 the witch.<\/p>\n \u201cThe witch as it is played in our minds is a projection, and one that was utilised by society to define and police itself,\u201d Link says. It seemed only natural that in order to write a new saga for the figure of the witch, the age-old practice of constructing her myth should once again apply. Her project is therefore an attempt at an historical simulation, meant to reclaim the past. \u201cI believe that in order for women to have adequate representation in culture today, we must claim back our historical images. A strong woman is always portrayed as a witch, marginalised and persecuted as demonic figure. I encourage women to see witches as their predecessors and identify with their centuries-old legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n Her witches are magnificent and beautiful, resembling Yemenite brides in their fantastical decorum; they are ornamented almost beyond recognition, an amalgamation of symbols and projections \u2013 some of which are also menacing. Yet their beauty pierces through the layers, bearing testimony to their power. \u201cThey are objects laden with all the things our culture wants them to be. Working on the images was a brutal process of cutting heads, reshaping breasts and severing arms, just like it\u2019s done to images of women in digital retouching processes for magazines and advertisements. I wanted to make a female prototype that at- tempts to be whole and fails.\u201d<\/p>\n The visual language of advertising is some- thing that Link is heavily influenced by. \u201cI\u2019m the kind of person who never zaps away during commercial breaks on TV, I love it.\u201d Art, for her, has to make use of the language and techniques of this day and age; it is something people are familiar with, a universal language that they immediately recognise.<\/p>\n If mass media is largely responsible for the dissemination of female images as skinny, light- skinned creatures with surprised expressions and pouting mouths, with this series, Link tries to use media\u2019s very identifiable, persuasive visual language to create a new signifier that is at once seductive and enthralling, but also im- perfect and even frightening, something that allows for women to identify themselves with. And just like any other group, the witches needed their very own symbol.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Use the V\u2019 is my slogan. The V sign exists all over the world, but it means different things in different countries and contexts. It can be the sign for victory or peace, a simple greeting or female genitalia. everyone makes the gesture of the V,\u201d she says, raising her right hand, showing another art work from the series: a ring on her middle finger which pushes the index finger slightly to the side to form the V sign. \u201cIt\u2019s a universal sign that takes on different meanings, and so are the witches in my series, who are hybrids from all cultures, while the only thing they have in common is that they\u2019re all women.\u201d Link propagates the complete appropriation of the witch as a female role model and the V sign as her symbol, partially inventing its history, while using uncannily familiar visual language.<\/p>\n \u201cBeauty is another aspect,\u201d she goes on. \u201cWomen were and always will be objectified. You can\u2019t just erase that and say we should be ugly. What we must do, however, is break the formula which prescribes that for women to be beautiful also means being submissive and subjugated.\u201d Indeed, there is no formula for a new femininity, but Beyonc\u00e9 is, for Talia Link, a huge role model. \u201cTo me she\u2019s like a shaman, the way she dances in a trance, yet fully in control, half naked in her leotard. She is powerful and sexy and I appreciate the fact that there\u2019s a generation of little girls out there grow- ing up with her image as their role model.\u201d<\/p>\n The time has come to construct a new femininity, to write a new history for women. Forget the broomstick and the black cat, and in the opening words of Link\u2019s promotional video for her witches series \u2013 \u201cUse the V\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Essay by Hili Perlson<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Witch1_TaliaLink_20x300CMYK.jpg\")
Talia Link, Witch no.1, 2012. Digital collage, Inkjet print. 112 x 110 cm. From the Witches Project. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n
<\/b>Link\u2019s work touches on something longstanding. Scholar and activist Silvia Federici, author of \u201cCaliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation\u201d, asserts that women accused of witchcraft and subsequently burnt at the stake were not necessarily practicing members of pagan cults, but rather regular peasants who resisted the oppressive and impoverishing developments arising from feudalism. Witch hunts, she and many other scholars agree, served as a regulating tool to maintain a hegemonic political economic system. even so, the dark ages weren\u2019t the darkest centuries as far as women\u2019s persecution and demonisation go. In the late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries things, to coin a phrase, got a hell of a lot darker.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Witch5_TaliaLink_20x300CMYK.jpg\")
Talia Link, Witch no. 5, 2012. Digital collage, Inkjet print. 112 x 110 cm. From the Witches Project. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n
<\/b>\u201cA witch is, actually, a successful (in the sense of surviving) deviant,\u201d wrote the avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren 1947. \u201cMost people survive because they conform… then suddenly you have someone not behaving \u2018normally\u2019 and usually they cannot survive, since having rejected the system they go under, so to speak. … but then you get a deviant which survives, and since it does not draw its support from the normal pattern \u2013 and since the normal people only consider themselves as natural \u2013 the deviant is understood as drawing its support from \u2018unknown\u2019, \u2018supernatural\u2019 sources.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Witch6_TaliaLink_20x300CMYK.jpg\")
Talia Link, Witch no.6, 2012. Digital collage, Inkjet print. 112 x 110 cm. From the Witches Project. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n
<\/b>Slander is among the easiest ways to subjugate a person \u2013 the outsider is named a madman by his enemies, the threatening woman a witch by hers. But political activists and artists alike have picked up the \u201cwitch\u201d signifier throughout the Twentieth Century to prompt a retransmission in the power of naming, and female artists in particular have used to it great effect.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Witch4_TaliaLink_20x300CMYK.jpg\")
Talia Link, Witch no. 4, 2012. Digital collage, Inkjet print. 112 x 110 cm. From the Witches Project. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n