Inheritance

Images of the piece on display for RCA Show 2012 (open until next Sunday -1st July) along with the etchings.

sewn photographs (beards)

This was a piece playing with notions of masculinity and femininity by creating something masculine (beards) out of something feminine (embroidery). I also had an idea of making them all look like Freud or archetypal psychoanalysts, in the back of my mind.

sewn photographs (lips)

Here I liked the play between the stitching looking like lipstick and sealing the mouths shut. I was referring to womens' historical lack of voice (politically and socially) and aphonia (loss of speech) due to hysteria, as described in Freud's case of 'Dora'. I was also reading about the psychological states of mind of women conforming to social demands (here illustrated by wearing lipstick) and how the apparent conformist act of embroidery helped them find ways to rebel.

Clouds (Wolken)

The title is a reference to Freud's patient Bertha Pappenheim's description of her hysterical episodes as "clouds". I like to think of the pieces in the same way as you look for shapes in clouds in the sky (which also references searching for meaning in ink blot shapes with Rorschach's test). I also wanted to explore women's experience of psychoanalysis and their relationship with the analyst.