divine destiny
handembroided photographs
(beloved and lovable child) The naked little girl wasn’t begging. Her older, somewhat dressed sisters was taking care of that. With snort all over her face and repellently suspicious sores on her body, she was bad for business and had therefore been told to stay out-of-the-way. “But how did you dare to touch her?” my travel companions asked me later. “She was probably contagious, it looked like leprosy or something…” They prefer to give rupees, if anything. I rather give my heart.
four-armed Many cautious parents cut the hair of the pretty ones and dress them as boys.
(the gorgeous) If it wouldn’t have been for the “photo-money, please” directly after the click, I might have believed that she was smiling for real.
(beloved and lovable child) The naked little girl wasn’t begging. Her older, somewhat dressed sisters was taking care of that. With snort all over her face and repellently suspicious sores on her body, she was bad for business and had therefore been told to stay out-of-the-way. “But how did you dare to touch her?” my travel companions asked me later. “She was probably contagious, it looked like leprosy or something…” They prefer to give rupees, if anything. I rather give my heart.
The title is misleading. The children in the pictures of “Divine Destiny” don’t have a bright future ahead of them. Belonging to the group of Dalit, the so-called “untouchables”, they are excluded from the Indian caste system already at birth. I met these wonderful kids when traveling in Rajasthan; brief encounters that will forever be engraved in my heart.
Inspired by the 19century artist Ravi Varmâ who developed a technique to make images of Hindi gods affordable to the poor, I embroider my pictures with scraps from old wedding saris which I bought from a muslim woman in Udajphur (but that's another story).
While stitching and sewing and transforming the children in my photographs into divine beings, I feel very close to them. It happens that I fantasize that I’m about to make a difference in their lives. I even chose to give them names of gods.
But then again, I’m really not trying to save anyone. This work is just my naked reaction on a very disturbing discrimination.
The ongoing project already consists of twelve hand-embroidered photographs printed on FineArt Hahnemühle
+ a stop motion video.
Most of the pictures are 50x70cm.
But some, according to Indian tradition,are miniatures (12 x 16 cm).