ANNE MARIE ALDERSHOF

On this installation from 2008 I still get strong reactions usually along the lines of 'sick'. Therefore I would like to tell more about this work.
I have personally experienced a miscarriage, and believe me there was much more blood involved then this artwork shows. This work should be conceived as a tribute. It is not made to  Shock people, I made it for myself. Because my work is always a personal statement.
My work is often about life and death, Eros and Thanatos (the life instinct and death instinct). Life and death belong together, without one the other cannot exist. I examine them, try to grasp and understand it. With images you speak a language other than words. I am a visual thinker, I think in a non-verbal way through visual processing using the part of the brain that is emotional and creative to organize information in a intuitive and simultaneous way. Some images will stay in my head for years until I find a way to translate it into a physical image. Until than I will work on it in my head, thinking about what materials would be suitable. Sometimes the material is not what I want and creates a different picture than I initially envisioned.

Why did I used wool for "miscarriage"? I grew up in anthroposophical children’s home. I got an anthroposophic education. My toys were of wool and wood, natural materials. The colors brown, grey and black were banned because they were suppose to be evil colors. The lessons at school were often about fairy tales and myths. I thought about it as woolly thinking and saw anthropologists as woolly people who were always in a state of dreaming, non realistic thinkers. I hated the fairies and little people of wool, I longed for plastic toys with bright colors. There is nothing magical about wool, it is no fairytail when you know the truth behind the wool industry. Most of the wool comes from Australia. They cut huge strips of skin and flesh off the backs of unanestihetized lambs’legs and around their tails known as mulesing.  When sheep age and their wool production declines, they are sold for slaughter. This results in the cruel live export of millions of sheep every year to the Middle East and North Africa. Therefore I thought that wool will be the best material to use for my miscarriage, life is not a fairytail.

My work is a kind of self-analysis. By making images I learn to understand myself better. Pictures tell something about your personality, your thinking. Frued once said: "A painting is actually a dirty diaper”. Art for me is a way of speaking my mind and sometimes a therapy.

Anne Marie Aldershof, Holland
http://www.aldershof.eu