womens beyond border logo

BOXES beyond borders

Category: Coffin

The Mummified Stone Heart

The central focus is a very special stone heart found on the Pacific coast at the equator. It has an uncommon green color. a heart with many scars. Once it was split, but love was able to hold it together and unify what had been separated.

Sorrow leaves wounds; joy brings peace.
This heart has found its peace.
Its wounds have healed.
The purpose of life was fulfilled; the eternal cycle of birth to life and death to a new life.
This heart has been embalmed; first if has been cleaned from all perishables.
The nucleus remained, one with the nature.
For women all over the world and over all times it might be a symbol for love;
isn’t the woman love’s keeper?
Love is immortal.
Faith and hope in the victory of love might be the symbol of humankind in the next millennium.

NOTE: This embalmed heart has been wrapped with golden ribbons, placed on a plate of slate from the Andes, and bedded in a stone sarcophagus.  The feather of a white swan symbolizes the purity of the heart.  As grave goods, there are two sealed papyrus rolls perpetuating the heart’s qualities. This project contains symbols from four different continents (America, Asia, Europe, Africa).

Memory

This box is about memory. The interior, the little empty scarlet sarcophagus, symbolizes that which is memorized, which can never be recaptured exactly; the red on the outside is only an echo, and is overlaid, confused, obscured, and changed by later colors. I mourn the loss of that intimate vermilion promise.

I am a painter and a writer, and for the past four years I have been writing a large biography, of a couple whose lives overlapped with mine, though I never met them. I have spent these years sifting other people’s memories, both written and spoken, in pursuit of the exact, impossible hue of my subjects’ lives. This, too, is represented here.

I have only one chance. My box sails out across the waters of the world. Bon voyage, box. I’ll remember you.

One Thousand Years of Sewing into the Night

My grandmother’s sewing box, a gift from her mother, handed down to me by my mother, is my inspiration for Women beyond borders. I have made a tiny sarcophagus of pins, cotton and frayed red velvet – to symbolize thousands of droplets of blood from pin-pricked fingers – all embedded in the wax of candles burned into the night, lighting women’s often unappreciated work of skill, toil and pleasure.

 

El Voto

This is a memorial to all in my country, Guatemala, who have never received a proper burial, and were not only insanely murdered by the army of their own country, but then piled up in clandestine cemeteries, so that their loved ones could never come and be with them.  

And the epitaph (THE WISH) reads as follows:

Oh! Please give us a tomb!
a tomb for our souls,
for our poor bodies,
so sore
and tough
from that volcanic lime!

We plead you,
we implore you, dear God, dear people,
dear brothers,
little brothers and little sisters,
give us a tomb,
a safe tomb,
with a shroud made of sweetness,
a place to console us,
a nice place,
to erase the infamy,
a beautiful tomb,
for us!

 

The Power of Life

The difference between death and life…the immortal still rise from the grave and represent a strong life which is seen everywhere.  The freshness of the flowers differs from the quietness of the gray burnt tombstone, the dry and stained pieces of iron and even the spike tunnel where death is always near by.

Flowers still live and rise above all.

Withdrawal

Withdrawal into a coffin, which feels like a tub that may only be locked from the inside.

Withdrawal like a hurt fox withdraws into her fox-den to lick her wounds to put one’s dreams in order.

One, who is carried inside by some people anyway, becomes only rarely visible for the outside. (Only few can feel and understand the distance originating thereof, and are therefore especially close) from life, from the existence.

To bring dying to an end & to begin anew.

 

 

Permanent Love

“Love’s over brimming mystery joins life and death.”              Tagore

In former times, Romeo and Juliet could not remain together, and were willing to die side by side. In recent days, the modern Romeo and Juliet ran from the Bosnian siege, also dying side by side. How many such unhappy love stories are there over the world?

I believe in destiny. I make this box as a coffin, with the wish that it is the house of girls and boys, women and men who love one another, yet are not able to become man and wife. This box is a love coffin for Permanent Love.

Men and women in love, whether old or young, may die, but their love still remains, it never dies.  They will lie in the same coffin, and pray to live together in many future lives.

The Story of Late Chen Yuen Mei (Ma Che)

The work focuses on the life story of late Chen, a ma che or domestic servant, who came to Singapore from China in the early twentieth century. Despite having a hard life, she persevered for a brighter future. With her meager earnings, she supported her entire family in China, and contributed towards the purchase of 51 Neil Road. The premises housed the former Yuek Ann Tang which was a temple as well as an association that served as a refuge for ma ches; these women like Chen, were alone and poor. In her old age, Chen suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Chen gains my utmost respect, not only for her contributions to the association, but also for her outstanding character. She demonstrated strength and perseverance throughout her life. The work aims to develop an invisible space beyond the box, and includes a web site that walks one through the places where she lived. To fulfill Chen’s dream of a grand funeral and send-off on her last journey, the box serves as her coffin.

 

My World

My box is a small square world, and part of my world is in the box. On opening My World and looking closer one sees part of my individual history. A mirrored reflection of my wedding day. It represents love, culture, and intimacy. The bottom of the box is a coffin.

 

Beatrice’s Box – A Coffin

The figures on the top represent her husband and four children who were all murdered during the genocide. She had to (forced) watch, as her husband was hacked into four or five pieces. Overwhelmed with tears, she could not go any further.
Note the small red heart on the side.

Posibilidades

What is this piece about? For me, it’s about the danger of sensuality. How we are beckoned by the flesh. How our desire can become our anguish. How a wrong decision can mean death, be it of the spirit or the body. How the need for self-destruction can be initiated in a seemingly healthy person from the hurt and pain of a relationship. Thus — the presence of the sword. Although I also see this sword as positive, perhaps a form of protection or an attribute, like that of Saint Agnes. *

The question of violence enters in here, too. This woman — in all her sensuality — is in a coffin. Why? Was she a victim of violence, of rape? Can our sensual self die under certain circumstances? Is our nudity kept hidden away in a dark, quiet place?

The veil also invokes the mysteriousness of Muslim women, their eyes being their only available sensual feature.

* (Saint Agnes was very beautiful, but she rejected all of her suitors, one of whom became angry and had her condemned to death. Since it was forbidden to execute virgins, she was first sent to a burdel. Nevertheless, no man was able to touch her. After being tortured, she was finally decapitated. She is often portrayed with a sword piercing her breast. She is the patron saint of virginal innocence.)

Limitation

Each restriction, each limitation is just like a coffin.

Don’t dance, don’t see, don’t speak, don’t do anything and
don’t be what you want to be. . .

Each restriction, each limitation which annihilates natural desires and wishes is like a coffin overwhelming the spirit.

Although all through history and in many educational and governmental systems these coffins have been made for men and women, women have always been more victims of these restrictions and limitations or confined to these coffins.