The Way Home
Type of work: Installation
Materials: My maternal grandmother’s blouse, red thread and a re-used coat hanger
Size: Approximately 70 x 50 centimetres
Year: 1998
Photo: Cecilia Sering
About the work:
The Way Home is an installation of my maternal grandmother’s blouse, red thread and a re-used coat hanger. The blouse is sewn together through the back and front pieces. The Way Home shows a map of all the journeys I made while growing up. Until the age of 13, the journeys were fun and everyone in the family was healthy. After that, others in the family and myself became ill during longer periods, yet the journeys continued. As I sew the map, it became physically harder and harder for every journey to push the needle back through the hometown that was placed in the heart area of the blouse. The process of sewing became an unwanted reliving of the pain of living with, and even more trying to travel with, severe illnesses in the family.
Much later it was discovered that I suffer from double heart diseases since birth, which has deepened the meaning of this artwork.
