Flower Children
Autumn 2005
50cm x 50cm x 40cm each

Description
Three children’s dresses: the first covered in hundreds of colourful scraps of cloth, fabric flowers and patterns, stitched together, a firm and strong armour of protection through fantasy and imagination. The second dress pale, of thin fragile fabric kept in shape with layers of delicate net, with burnt holes that from far away look like lacy pattern, pale flowers with burnt edges, loose threads. The third dress, layers of black lace and crocheted fuse wire over a thin white disintegrating dress draped over the black net of despair.

Themes, Comments and Storylines
Different aspects of childhood: resilience and strength, vulnerability and fragility, sadness and happiness, helplessness and fear

“Most people put their childhood away as if it was an old hat. They forget it as if it was a phone number that does not apply anymore. They think about their life as if it was a salami which they are eating slice by slice and what has been eaten doesn’t exist any more… Before, they were children and then they became grown-ups, but what are they now? Only those who grow up and still remain children are real human beings.”

Erich Kästner (1952) in Strich, Christian (ed) (1978), Das Erich Kästner Lesebuch, Diogenes, Zürich 1978, p.12, my translation.


“It is my second day at school, I am three years old, I am wearing a red woollen cardigan and I am sobbing uncontrollably, I remember the wall painted in a cream gloss and it appears almost liquid-like, I am facing this wall. I also remember my cardigan being very wet and glistening with my tears. All the sounds around me are muffled- I feel very miserable and scared.”
BBC Radio 4 Memory Experience 2006

 

More childhood stories: love children, childhood portraits, safety matters, child's play