Doses

  1. Intro
  2. Mother’s Face
  3. Light
  4. Smile
  5. Meter
  6. Life
  7. Complexity
  8. Deadline
  9. Macroscopic
  10. God
  11. Boredom
  12. Object
  13. Inherent
  14. Abstract
  15. Pedia
  16. Illusion
  17. Joint
  18. Rearrange
  19. I want to be good
  20. Authenticity
  21. Label
  22. Aesthetic 

About
Reference
Newsletter
Email


Mother’s Face


Wayne Thiebaud <Woman in Tub>, Peter Zumthor <Saint Benedict Chapel>




Wayne Thiebaud, Woman in Tub, United States, 1965 © Artsy

The unspoken desire of my mother to visit Switzerland added a subtle pressure, leading me to organize a trip despite the constraints on my time and space. Although I had been postponing the trip for months, a Wayne Thibaud exhibition compelled me to purchase a plane ticket for her, inspired by the similarity between a painting and the image of my mother that I saw in the bathroom. The slightly grotesque portrayal in the artwork mirrored my mother's facial expressions, capturing certain strokes, details, and the peculiar positioning of the head in the tub. Despite the subject being a Western woman, there was an unexpected resemblance to my mom. It was a decisive moment.



Peter Zumthor, Saint Benedict Capel, Sumvitg (Switzerland), 1989
© Felipe Camus

 Peter Zumthor has embedded the essence of Mother's face deep within the confines of a chapel. When I walked up the road to the chapel and entered the chapel and encountered the mysterious box, I sequentially felt the deepest inner world of someone who remembers Mother. It was an icon of Mary in the chapel. Accompanying my mother, the journey to the chapel was with the Stations of the Cross, prompting a pause for her to recite the Hail Mary. Once inside the chapel, I sat at a distance from my mother to cool down my exhaustion and frustration, and then discovered a mysterious little box that was neither a familiar sacred object nor a tabernacle of light - it revealed the face of Mary. Unlike the explicitly spiritual religious paintings in my stereotype, which try to create a holy atmosphere, this room radiated a simple yet profound atmosphere. This was due to the presence of the door of the box, which interrupted the continuous flow. From the long path to the chapel, through the altar, and even when the door is opened, the image of Mary allows me to experience a glimpse into Peter Zumthor's heart with the image of his mother.


A letter to Andrei Tarkovsky strengthened my desire to create a work of such depth.

A woman wrote me from Gorky: ‘Thank you for MIRROR. My childhood was like that. … Only how did you know about it? ‘There was that wind, and the thunderstorm… “Galka, put the cat out,” cried by Grandmother … It was dark in the room … And the paraffin lamp went out, too, and the feeling of waiting for my mother to come back filled my entire soul … And how beautifully your film shows the awakening of a child’s consciousness of this thought! … And Lord, how true … we really don’t know our mother’s face. And how simple … You know, in that dark cinema, looking at a piece of canvas lit up by your talent, I felt for the first time in my life that I was not alone …’ 1  

The multifaceted nature of motherhood is revealed in different ways. Through this experience, I encountered an aspect of my mother's identity that was previously unfamiliar to me. Regardless of the specific mental image, I inevitably pause to contemplate the essence of my mother.


1) Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, University of Texas Press, 1989 p10