A Burial

This work is a burial. It is a ritualistic farewell to my mother and a return to her ancestors and island home of Tahiti. The series combines woven artefacts with landscape images; family archive, cyanotype prints and self portraiture.

For 30 years my mother's ashes have rested in an urn, concealed in a brown paper bag awaiting reunion with my father's. My father's wish is we await his passing before they are scattered into the sea together. Her marriage to him marked the beginning of her life in Australia and her departure from Tahiti and her Tahitian family.

Her death was cataclysmic for my family. On her deathbed, she begged me to let her go. At her side, I begged her to stay. 

I've lived a lifetime in her absence and mourning. The revelation that she and I are held in painful limbo, as well as the gut-wrenching fact that it's a Tahitian tradition to bury loved ones in their familial land inspired this work. The work echoes my grief, isolation and the mana (spirit) of the mountains, ocean, sky and plants of our Fenua (Tahiti and her islands). This work is a burial. A ritual of making and closure. A farewell and a welcome to ancestors.

Strips of handwritten letters between my mother and me are woven into landscape images of our islands. The resonance of our shared stories, both ordinary and extraordinary, momentarily makes her presence felt and her voice heard. The ritualistic making of these woven artefacts was one last conversation of remembering and retelling. Utilising the cyano-type process echoes the traditional Tahitian fabric motif printing, along with its experiential qualities of making.