QUARTERED MOTHER
I still remember vividly the time when I was a new mum. The quiet and very still hours laying propped up in bed with my little baby sleeping on my chest. It was as if everything I had known before had stopped – in fact it had!
It was then the idea for a new big art project hit me.
I suddenly knew that I had to cut up and re-assemble national flags. Mix them up and make them into new, fluid symbols of our shared humanity.
What I didn’t know back then was the deeper reason for my idea.
My own internal struggles with being a German ex-pat living in London, a mingled national identity.
And, more importantly, the implosion that had just happened to my life as a free floating artist – becoming a mother. The weight of carrying responsibility for a new fragile life had just started to dawn on me. The old me had been ripped up. The new version was only just emerging.
And everything was drenched in this all-consuming and most intense love I had never experienced before.
Looking back now I can see why ripping up and reassembling appealed to me then, it mirrored my internal landscape and the transformation I was undergoing.
Now 8 years in, my work still orbits this transformation. The cuts have healed – the new version of me is more colourful and multi-layered, filled with a new depth, a new vulnerability and a new glowing power.
This is the inspiration behind the new project I’m working on: Being Quartered
Quartered Mother measures 79 x 58 cm and gets nailed directly to the wall.
2023. Acrylic paint on different fabrics. cut and re-assembled.
£2,300. If you would like to buy this piece please get in touch.
