Mermaids
My mermaids are like women in contemporary society, who, in spite of the changes of recent decades, still often find themselves not being heard, without voices, or otherwise unable to impact their situations. My mermaids are fully dressed and submerged in water up to their chests. They are captured in different seasons, in frozen, stormy water or buried in fallen tree leaves. I see them as misplaced and “captured.” In many of the drawings, they try to talk, signal, see, or generally connect with the world they partly belong to, but seem unable to explore out. I like the idea of using the mythological character of the mermaid and twisting the expectations of the viewer for that character both visually and conceptually. My mermaids are women without voices: they see, but are not seen; they hear, but are not heard, and they are not truly mobile.
My work starts from the individual—me, the little person, the subjective experience—and grows to a much larger structure: a society, an environment. One sick tree is not a huge loss, but a sick orchard, a sick forest is. One blinded woman (or mermaid) is just a personal tragedy; but a lake, a sea, an ocean full of them is a catastrophe.
