Works on canvas that feature mummies
‘Why do the English have the same word for a swaddled corpse and cuddly maternity?’ AS Byatt
In every culture there are taboos about motherhood. Constraints that contain and hold motherhood in ideality, and make her less human. Recent discovery of tatoos on the dessicated skin of mummies, and their close examination has brought new knowledge of possibilities of how they lived in life, there is something so mortal, despite the immortality attained by ancient mummies, that at once deifies and reifies them. The respect they have attained in death, probably did not reflect how they were treated in life.
Coccooned, dessicated, their skin like parchment, preserved mummies have had the life sucked out of them, anachronistically adding red dresses brings them to life, honouring them, yet questioning the way at once we idolize and denigrate real life mothers.
