Mapping

Mapping
You might think I am mad photographing the lace when I am running out of time. But this is an instance where the camera sees more than you do. When I am pinning these pieces- and remember they are quite large it is very hard to get an insight into how they actually look, because the hard wood of the floor somehow doesn't generate the same sense of transparency as hanging it up and looking. This piece is actually made of "maps"- a real map of the island where my fathers family came from called Walcheren, which on a map from 1630 , I found , was still an island, and strands of dna. Ultimately with all the searching I did the only thing that really connected me with any of the past , were these two finites. All the people in between are unknowns to me, but I do carry some of their genes. All the other things are products of my imagination- how I might imagine these people might have related to anything. My other aim was that someone from 1570 ( this is the first record of a birth in my fathers family) might recognise what I was making, and likewise someone of the future might recognise it as the same thing. They may not like it but they would grasp the idea that it was lace- and then if they really looked they might see that it is also a story of roots and migration- in actual fact their story and my story.