Create Your First Project
Start adding your projects to your portfolio. Click on "Manage Projects" to get started
Is is possible without a child?
Project type
Is it possible without child, watercolor and pastels on paper, 50 x 70.
Date
February 2023
Location
Athens
This is a painting I did after a conversation I had with my grandmother. The mountain in the painting is a characteristic mountain that is visible from my village which has a clear human figure. In my village, there is a legend that this figure is Alexander the Great. This myth shows the power of male heroes. Even if the mountain figure has a big curve that makes it look like a pregnant woman in the village they see it as a man. For me this mountain represents femininity and it is connected with the females from the land.
In this conversation my grandmother talked about her difficulty to have a child because of losing babies while being pregnant. While she was disclosing her painful experience of losing babies because of her hard work in the field she was also expressing her worry of not having children. She was repeating “Is it possible without a child?”. I felt like she was asking me if it was possible and she was also letting me know that it is not possible. She was expressing her worry about not being a good enough woman, wife, worker, or housewife since she was not able to carry her babies. In this painting, I am representing the mountain as a traditional woman from the village playing between the pleasure and the pain of choosing the traditional woman role.