With the Pain in ɘM I allowed my synesthetic experiences to play a part in my workр by using it as a tool in sense of a vehicle to enable a kind of communication, crossing the borders of time. It was an attempt to get more in touch with parts of my background that lie in Indonesia and the colonial past that is inextricably linked to it, and more specifically, my great-grandmother Painem.
Her name is red.
With the mirrored notation of “Me” in the title of the work I want to indicate a direction in communicating, coming out of me (or any person), returning back in, where the ability lies of using the channels to speak with the ancestors. The name of Painem hidden in this, of course, cannot be a coincidence.
An important element within my recent work is the 80 year old Singer sewing machine from the inheritance of my grandmother. Where the phrase "it feels like the spirit of my
ancestors speaks through me" may sound vague and hovering, It also means quite concretely, that every piece stitched together with this Singer sewing machine went indirectly through my grandmother's fingers and thus through the fingers of the generations of mothers who came before her. In that way, I see it as another instrument of communication between my ancestors and me. One that I can physically grasp, of solid material outside my head.
40х20х10 cm, carton, acrylics, cotton lace ribbon, canvas, sewing thread, pins, pattern
paper, pencil, Indian ink, gouache.