EMBRACING SHADOWS By: Agnieszka Matejko “If you put frightening things into a picture, then they can’t harm you. In fact, you end up becoming quite fond of them.”—Paula Rego1 Lost in a dark forest, a frightened boy transforms into a stag. A spider crawls on human hands. A reborn Medusa rises from a vulva-shaped clamshell. An emaciated Gaia brings forth new life. These eerie scenes fill Tammy Salzl’s Beautiful Parasites, an exhibition of paintings and mixed-media sculptures bathed in a haunting soundscape by Canadian composer Greg Mulyk. Many of Salzl’s characters are household names. Countless Disney films and tomes of Greek myth have embedded them deep into children’s lore. Yet Salzl’s take on European folklore startles. There is nothing childlike about a female-headed spider whose open legs reveal a row of breasts, like the ancient sculptures of Artemis of Ephesus. Savage sexuality and danger lurks in the shadows. There are no soothing fairy-tale endings. Salzl’s unflinching take on childhood stories draws on their origins: the bone-chilling folktales of the European oral traditions passed on around firepits or spinning wheels. These stories started out full of the macabre, but they have been increasingly bowdlerized over the ages. For instance, in the first edition of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s folklore collections, from 1812, Snow White’s mother wants to devour her lungs and liver, Rapunzel has a “merry time” in the tower and is impregnated by the prince, and Hansel and Gretel’s mother abandons them in the forest. By the seventh and final edition, in 1857, the tales have been sanitized, made child-friendly, and filled with Christian references. And modern-day versions, such as Disney’s lovable tearjerkers, are unrecognizable. But the atrocities in the original tales have a purpose. According to Maria Tatar, a Harvard University professor of folklore and mythology whose scholarship Salzl admires, fairy tales can be therapeutic. As Tatar explains in The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, gruesome stories can transform trauma and pain. “By entering the world of fantasy and imagination, children and adults secure for themselves a safe space where fears can be confronted, mastered, and banished,” she writes.2 Tatar’s words are key to understanding the horror embedded in Salzl’s artworks—some of them based on harrowing childhood experiences. For instance, when Salzl was in elementary school, her mother joined the Pentecostal Church and forced her daughter to attend services and memorize scriptures. As Salzl watched other parishioners speak in tongues and collapse on the floor filled with God’s spirit, she felt only fear of hell and damnation.
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