Facing the jungle girls
I cover my face against the cold wind on the battlefield. I cover to avoid being recognized, to avert exposure. I cover my eyes, so I donʼt see you. I cover my eyes, so you wonʼt see me. I hide in the dark, looking through the knitted stitches of the woollen balaclava that covers my head. I am a jungle girl.
A jungle girl is neither a long-legged, long-haired member of a girl group in camouflage clothing, playfully shifting between girlish and aggressive, nor is it the Amazon-like wife of Tarzan, uniting romantic heroine and fitness instructor in one person. A jungle girl, a character which repeatedly appears in the work of Angelique van Wesemael, is a childlike figure, barelegged – and faceless.
The facial features of the people inhabiting the minimal and silent spaces of van Wesemaels drawings are never lifelike, but often they are deprived of the one sense considered most important in the western world, the sense of sight. None of them have eyes, or if they have, they hide them behind their hands or cover them with balaclavas.
Another word for balaclava, used on the Indian subcontinent, is monkey cap. The name describes the fact that the balaclava conceals most features making a face human. The balaclava is commonly understood as a symbol of aggression, because it blurs out the individual facial features, making someone incognisable by covering everything but the eyes. The faceless individual is an outlaw, a creature rather than a human being and as such predisposed to unpredictable and irrational behaviour, and a threat to a normal and well organised life.
The balaclava worn by the van Wesemael jungle girls is different. The only part of the face we see is the mouth. The monkey cap normally being symbol of a non-verbal aggression is now possibly a non-visual aggression. The faceless (the idea of the loss of face) is still most frightening to the viewer, but with no eyes to look into, the impossibility of communication seems complete. We can only imagine, what might be behind the knitted garment covering the head of the jungle girls. Do they have eyes at all?
The eye is said to be the most important carrier of information. With no vision, with no eye contact, we believe to have no insight, no knowledge of the other. On the one hand the eye is in Christian tradition said to be the lamp of the body, a metaphor most commonly interpreted as the capacity to distinguish between good and evil given to humans through eyesight. At the same time, the eye is thought of as the door to the soul, revealing honesty and sincerity in our counterparts. Sight and insight are thus inextricably linked, which explains our fear of the hidden or even evil eyes.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Maybe the three wise monkeys, together forming the perfect monkey cap covering eyes, ears and mouth, are the most humane of all beings? And if so, maybe the jungle girls understood that? Maybe the balaclava hides the innocent and unspoiled vision of a child not ready to leave her childhood jungle, not ready to see evil, to hear evil, but, the mouth being uncovered, maybe ready to scream?
Alice Goudsmit, 2011