My too blue heart on your two blue sleeves

This work is an exploration of what gestures of grief might look like, following my experience with bereavement after the death of my mother. As in earlier work I have taken my reference from archive photographs made in the Parisian Sâlpetrière Asylum at the end of the 19th century, where dispossessed women 'performed' their maladies for the psychiatrists who studied them. Those investigations coincided with the birth of photography, presenting a fascinating record of disturbance, medicine and mimicry. In 'My too blue heart on your two blue sleeves' I have photographed myself wearing a dress belonging to my own Parisian grandmother, who suffered herself for many years with manic depression. The threads stretching between her, my mother and myself are made tangible in the performance of my state of mind and body. Long exposures allow me to capture the sense of movement in the images.