This work is an exploration of what gestures of grief might look like, following the artist’s experience with bereavement after the death of her mother. As in The rehearsal (dedicated to Augustine) her reference comes from archive photographs made in the Parisian Sâlpetrière Asylum at the end of the 19th century, where dispossessed women ‘performed’ their maladies for psychiatrists who studied them. Those investigations coincided with the birth of photography, presenting a fascinating record of disturbance, medicine and mimicry. In My too blue heart on your two blue sleeves the artist has put on a dress belonging to her own Parisian grandmother, who suffered herself for many years with manic depression. The threads stretching between her and her maternal heritage are made tangible in the performance of mind and body. Long exposures allow a sense of movement in the images.
“In the beginning I held the maternal line. There was me, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother and bonne-maman. Now there is only me.“


This is a story about the end of the line, a tale of how I was last.



2014