Black Headscraf

2013, Photo album, different papers, acryl, gaze, 34 x 21 x 6 cm,

An old family album is filled with personal spiritual connections to the past: letters, pictures, words…. It is an attempt to reconstruct the past with the means of the present. But how much truth is there in it? And how much utopia?

The greater the distance in time and place to the past, the more the truth is reduced to the essential – a metaphor about space and time, about home and childhood.

The headscarf is a symbol. It tells of femininity and oppression, of tradition and religion, of yesterday and tomorrow. The headscarf plays an important role in many societies. In fact, the black headscarf is the most striking thing I remember from my childhood as a member of the German minority in Romania. It was a visible sign of marriage and “Germanness”. The headscarf still accompanies me in my life today: socially, politically, personally.

This work is available as a physical object or video.