Fotograf Magazine

There are only two kinds of stories: from life to death, and from death back to the living. After my sister passed away I felt I was trapped in a limbo in someone else’s afterlife. I did not only lose her, I lost myself. The series Of Loss and Lightness narrates a tale of navigating oneself through grief. Using my body and my late sister’s dresses I examine the relationship of memories and materialities. Can objects harbor emotions? And can one access these enclosed emotions by intervening with their materiality?

Clothes work as tangible symbols of sorrow. Like Louise Bourgeois has shown, textiles are not only soft, but also fiercely feminine. The act of cutting runs in my bloodline: generations of women cutting up the clothes of the deceased to continuous thread, later to be weaved as rugs. And through this same act of cutting I am born again. Shift in the light as the sun rises, series of images unravel a naked body, a play between vulnerability and strength.