An eight-meter-long banner hangs in an open circle, holding linens I inherited from my grandmother: napkins, bedsheets, pillowcases, and tablecloths, all embroidered by hand with orange dots. Together, stitching, writing, and stone trace connections between family inheritance and geological time, between bodies and mountains, memory and material. Rocks precede animal life, yet their minerals are also embedded within our bodies, connecting the deep history of the earth to me, my grandmother, and the inheritance between us. Embroidered words drawn from her research and letters appear across the linens and connect to rocks placed on the floor, seemingly holding the textiles in place. Suspended together, the fragments form an alternative family tree, a womb or maybe a tomb or fragmented tent: a home for rocks and an envelope for the letters she writes to them. 

 

In the publication 'By A Woman', edited by Marjolein van der Loo and published by Onomatopee in 2026, coinciding with the exhibition under the same title, I wrote a series of letters, addressing rocks as companions, witnesses, and ancestors, moving between geological and human timescales and drawing parallels between mountains and bodies, erosion and grief, volcanic heat and menopause. 

Writer and curator Gianna Rovere, translated into English by Regan Mies, dives into the world built by me through a poetic constellation of stories, dreams, myths, and memories. Working with free association, repetition, rhythm, sound, texture, and bodily experience, she composes surprising connections between humans and minerals, in which stones become storytellers, grandmothers, archives, and companions across generations.

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2026

300cm x 300cm x 200cm

hand embroidery on cotton, embroidery thread, rocks, metal

 

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Supported by:

Stroom Den Haag

 

 

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Exhibition:
By A Woman, Onomatopee, Eindhoven

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photo: Nick Bookelaar