The Journey
At Chelsea School of Art, I was given the brief to create a book of a journey with published text as commentary. I used the opportunity to tell my mother's story - the war years & after: from her home in Ossetia to England. I'd heard so many stories, but whenever I got pen & paper to make notes, it silenced her, making it hard to keep track of dates, places & chronology: frustrating for both of us. This brief was a great way of telling the story in broad strokes, using the greatest text on exile: The Bible.
I wanted the book to appear exactly like a suitcase packed by a young girl leaving home & family in the 1940s, but with pages that could turn. I rigged up a pretty crude way of doing it - but it worked. Attached to the handle is a copy of her Registration / Identity Card (1947) with her photo & number + my photo & student number; both in our 20s. The 1st page, her prized possession: a picture of her 'mother'. (Artistic licence: in truth she'd left home without any photos, this, of her sister Tamara, came to her when she was reunited with her brother & sister 47 yrs after leaving home - not knowing if they were alive or dead in all that time). The text around the beautiful portrait reads: 'Hearken, O Daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house.' Psalm 45 v10. 'Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house.' Genesis 12 v1.
The 2nd page knitted & still on the wooden needle: I like how the word text means 'woven' & is the basis of 'textile'; so, the text is typed onto short pieces of linen tape tied in / woven amongst the yarn of scraps of wool & lengths of cloth (everything at that time would have been worn to death during those years & everything made to last as long as possible: recycling at its best). The text a little hard to read in places due to being tied: 'Hear my prayer ~ Give ear unto my cry'; 'An alien far from Home ~ In a foreign land'; 'Pain, fear, uncertainty ~ the very fabric of my being'; 'Memories wear thin ~ threads & shreds'; 'I sleep, but.....bitter'. The cloth covers another precious item: a Journal. The actual book cover, discarded at the antique map & print shop where I worked, so had the right vintage feel to it. The map showing the Black Sea & Caspian Sea, where my mum came from, is of the right era, also.
Pressed flowers from 'home'; sweet reminder. Next: left: using the Tom Phillips technique: 'the sad picture Destiny' - 'the collective force and weight of the State' - 'State of occupation'; + bank note, showing a 'worker' & Cyrillic script, to signify the rise of communism. Right: a drawing (bleach on ink) of Moscow's landmark building, St. Basil's. Text reads: 'Russia: wild regions of history!' - 'a tale of marches and retreats; of battles lost and won. Moscow ascending to the clouds'.
Left: 'Feeling despair and hopelessness' - 'I search lands utterly unknown' - 'desolation: to search the wilderness in all directions at once, questioning the stars' with compass rose & constellations.
I was conscious of the uncertainty of everything at that time: Where to go? How to get there? Where to stay? How to survive? So many questions; uncertain answers.... Right: contemporary map of France, Belgium, Germany, Austria + text: 'A new power has suddenly appeared, wholly different; praising its own ideals' - to signify the rise of Fascism.
By extraordinary circumstances, my mum found herself in Berlin during the 2 years when it was decimated by bombs, narrowly escaping death herself many times. She learned to speak fluent German. Here is a German lament with music notation. It reads: 'Come, sweet death, come heavenly rest! / Come, lead me away in peace / For I am weary of this world / Oh come! I wait for thee / Come soon, come take me / Close thou mine eyes / Come, heavenly rest!' Text below it reads: 'The song of shadowed pain and anger gradually began and rang to the rhythm of her own heart'. Lots of mistakes - as though hard to concentrate & smudgy as though from tears....The Journal ends after this, with beautiful marbled end-papers.
After the war, 2 displaced persons camps, both in Austria. Everyone wore identifying arm-bands; 'OST' = 'Eastern European'. She'd survived, but was still in danger. When Berlin was divided into 4 sectors, each country had to agree to send back any Russians they were harbouring. Unfortunately, any Russian who'd left was considered a 'traitor'. Many chose to commit suicide at their own hands rather than the 'suicide' of returning. Others escaped to ensure their freedom. My mother managed to successfully survive one camp by running away with her little suitcase when she saw soldiers appear with guns; at the 2nd camp she was 'adopted' by a Slovenian family who still had their daughter's papers. She had to face a panel of six - to answer questions on her identity: name, date of birth; place of birth (she had to show them on a map) etc. She passed. A week or so later, on meeting a member of that panel again, she was asked: 'So, where were you born this week?'
Mother's escape from that first displaced persons camp & all the other potential traps of war: morals & principles, discarded, stretched, overridden; being eaten up by bitterness or despair: all damage to one's soul. Text reads: 'Our soul has escaped, as a bird out of the snare of the fowler's; the snare is broken and we are escaped'. Psalm 124 v7. Escape came in the call for nurses in England. My mother had worked as a 'krankenschwester' in a mental institute in Austria. The Registration card showed she had come through the Hook of Holland, so...I added an embroidery sampler (one I'd made as a child when teaching myself), it features a little Dutch boy & girl from a vintage embroidery transfer.
The amazing thing I discovered when I started the project was how so many things came to me just when I needed them, or even before I realized I did. n my way to college one day, I came across the Anchor Embroidery Design, Price 6d. My tutor even commented on how Balkan the design appeared! It couldn't have been more perfect, but how it came to be on the street decades out of time at just the right time was a marvel. On its reverse side I printed a text in 'cross stitch' that reads: 'And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places'. Isaiah 33 v18
I fashioned a piece of cloth to make it look like a carefully folded vintage lace-necked nightgown, on which a small cloth bag rests. Inside: some 'Chadwicks' mending yarn & a decorative embroidered cloth with the text: ' 'I will both lay me down in peace and sleep; for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety'. Psalm 4 v8. In this story, the 'promised land' was Great Britain. I'd learned from my Brownie Handbook that shoes must always be packed at the bottom of a suitcase, so that's where I put my clapped out old shoes that I'd loved and worn to death, the way everyone would have done in those days. Shoes made by the company 'Faith'.
The text reads: 'By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out not knowing wither he went....' Hebrews 11 v8; (For we walk by Faith and not by sight) 2 Corinthians 5 v7.
Finally, an old newspaper, the Journal Penge & Sydenham - not accurate, but meant to signify the good news of being here in this country at all. I was so grateful for being given the brief; for the way I could tell the all-important story without having to worry too much about dates & details. My mum loved it, and that meant a lot to me, too. It was exhibited in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery in an exhibition on the theme of 'Journeys'. My mum went along to see it and was looking through its pages when a chap, looking over her shoulder, said: 'This person must have a lot of stories to tell!' - she was able to tell him it was her story. Our story.
