Motherland

The series Motherland flashes fragments from my personal Wunderkammer. It’s a collection of objects and experiences that accompanied me as I was growing up. Not simply into a woman, but also to my mother’s daughter and my grandmother’s granddaughter.

The journey toward embracing my femininity is never-ending for me. I am continually reconstructing my personal history by working through my dreams, traumas, and recollections.

As a basis of my art practice, I am intertwining real and fictitious elements. I mix documents and intimate perspectives with staged scenes from my personal narrative, complementing some with diary-like notes.

As I explored myself in the context of my family’s female line, a more intricate female history unfolded before me. I arrived at questions that forced me to dissect aspects of my life from the assumed building blocks through the structures I myself have built around me and considered parts of my personality. How much of my personal, or even the collective history influences my decisions and the way I feel and act now? Where does the story of my ancestors end and mine begin? How much of their history will become my legacy to pass on?

Visualizing the real and believed-to-be-real memories and stories enabled me to face these questions and articulate answers: at this stage in my life, I am determined to set new patterns by creating a thicker thread on which to weave my own narratives. In this context, the exploration of my personal history and the quest for my female identity are critical, essentially serving as a vehicle for both healing and growth.