Kordula M Coleman
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My Mama's Stories
This wall piece is a portrait of my mother Gertraud, her sister Resi and their dog Lumpi on the grounds of their childhood home in Germany, created in sgraffito technique after an old photograph. They grew up in Germany and the photo was taken shortly before the start of WW2. This piece has been part of a collection I have created for my recent solo show at Lanesboro Arts, titled ‘Dappled – growing up with Shadow and Light’. The collection explores my memories of growing up in postwar Germany with parents traumatized by their experiences connected to Nazi Germany and WW2. The stories my mother told me about her childhood and youth were bittersweet – a mix of innocence and terror. They made the burden she carried as a war survivor and the guilt she felt as a German, belonging to the country that had caused the war and carried out the Holocaust palpable. But they also brought her day to day joys and sorrows close and seemed to erase the time that had since passed.
This wall piece is a portrait of my mother Gertraud, her sister Resi and her brother Klaus enjoying apples, in their childhood home in Germany, created in sgraffito technique after an old photograph. The photo was taken a few years before the start of WW2. This piece has been part of a collection I have created for my recent solo show at Lanesboro Arts, titled ‘Dappled – growing up with Shadow and Light’. The collection explores my memories of growing up in postwar Germany with parents traumatized by their experiences connected to Nazi Germany and WW2. The stories my mother told me about her childhood and youth were a window into a different world and showed an often harsher way of growing up. They made the burden she carried as a war survivor and the guilt she felt as a German palpable, but also taught me to consciously enjoy the smallest and most ordinary everyday pleasures.
This sculpture is made in memory of my mother and her brave determination to be a loving and joyous mother despite the darkness she experienced living through WW2. It has been part of a collection I have created for my recent solo show at Lanesboro Arts, titled ‘Dappled – growing up with Shadow and Light’. The collection explores my memories of growing up in postwar Germany with parents traumatized by their experiences connected to Nazi Germany and WW2. The small engraved and painted images on the figure’s dress show treasured and mundane objects that were destroyed when my mother’s family home burned to the ground at the end of the war. Her grief about this event, the war as a whole and the unspeakable crimes of the Nazis was an underlying melancholic current in our home and shaped my childhood experiences. This is mirrored in the expression of the small child the woman is holding. But the gestures and poses of both mother and child also express love, trust and closeness.