Evanescence

This monochromatic, hand embroidered self portrait was done to mark the sixth month of my mother’s passing. The medium is silk and cotton thread on white cotton fabric from India, called ‘kaffan’. White is worn amongst Hindu people, during the period of mourning. Indian women wear this cotton as a sari on becoming widows; some wearing it for the rest of their lives. In India, this fabric is used to shroud a body prior to cremation. Muslims use seven pieces of this fabric to wrap the deceased for burial.

White is symbolic of my mourning, grief, emptiness and my sense of loss. My mother, herself a widow, was clothed in six metres of this white fabric, as a sari, for her cremation. White conveys purity, holiness, sacredness and spiritual authority. It is associated with life, love, death and burial, The delicate, white, finely woven cotton intimates my own vulnerability and mortality, as well as the impermanence and the fragility of life.