To My Mother
Ongoing, Embroidery with the artist’s own hair on paper
To My Mother is my direct response to my mother’s illness: my feeling of being helpless and being far away. My shed hair on the floor reminds me of my mother’s battle with breast cancer, her losing her hair, and losing her memories from Alzheimer’s soon after the cancer treatment and our lost connection.
The narrative embroidered on each panel is as personal and ephemeral as the shed hair itself, and it could vanish at any moment, just like everything I say to my mother is forgotten in seconds.
Hair in my work represents a connection to home, identity, and a link between past and future. Shed hair is a metaphor for memory loss, detached self, isolation, and disconnection. Sewing my hair into my work is my attempt to reconnect and heal. I stitched each letter onto the paper with my shed hair and mounted the paper on the thick blocks of wood to make both the narratives and hair tangible and permanent.
