Nuclear Care Constellation I – Be_ing Many
This tent exists on different levels (some of which I cannot explain, as they are not mine), from a simple cover to a temple dedicated to intergenerational care, and also an open, shifting archive of diasporas, supportive practices, and a place for rest and refuge.
Life keeps poking every other day at my illusions of control, leaving me soft and tender to soak into a sweet surrender.
From there, I see a sky made of bedsheets, crossed by the daily movements of your needs and mine. A cotton sky, mute and perpetually host to our skin, fluids, and dreams. I cut a few meters of the sky, dyed it with our favourite tea, and sewed it back together so we could rest in it, look at it while it looked at us, and maybe heal a little, learn, or just be.
This care constellation is an intergenerational tangle that both traps and embraces me. Even though my location and roles have shifted, I have always existed in this endless yet transitional household. I have carried it with me, mounted and dismounted it many times, decorated it, tried to mend it, ran away from it, sung to it, and written poems from pain to rejoicing. It has given me space so I could have space for others.
It is a tent with all its sacred and mundane meanings, a place to become one while being many.
You are most welcome to enter too.
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Life keeps poking every other day at my illusions of control, leaving me soft and tender to soak into a sweet surrender.
From there, I see a sky made of bedsheets, crossed by the daily movements of your needs and mine. A cotton sky, mute and perpetually host to our skin, fluids, and dreams. I cut a few meters of the sky, dyed it with our favourite tea, and sewed it back together so we could rest in it, look at it while it looked at us, and maybe heal a little, learn, or just be.
This care constellation is an intergenerational tangle that both traps and embraces me. Even though my location and roles have shifted, I have always existed in this endless yet transitional household. I have carried it with me, mounted and dismounted it many times, decorated it, tried to mend it, ran away from it, sung to it, and written poems from pain to rejoicing. It has given me space so I could have space for others.
It is a tent with all its sacred and mundane meanings, a place to become one while being many.
You are most welcome to enter too.
Installation in the form of an enterable tent, activated through encounters within it. Hand-dyed cotton fabric, cotton embroidery, quartz and jute. 2025.
Images from the exhibition Becoming Many
Photography by Sjors Hoogerdijk
Photography by Sjors Hoogerdijk
