Letters to the Mother III
Elena del Rivero
Valencia, Spain, 1949
- Date:1993
- Technique:Typing, gouache, ink and pencil on paper
- Descriptive technique:An ensemble of 272 numbered, dated and signed letters with individual titles
- Dimensions:Overall: 150 x 650 cm / Paper: 22,5 x 16 cm
- Category: Installation, Work on paper, Drawing
- Entry date:1994
- Register number:DE00316
Elena de Rivero has built her own language to explore the distances between the public and the private. This work draws inspiration from the letters that the writer Franz Kafka sent to his father in 1919 regarding a romantic disappointment supposedly caused by the lack of confidence from father to son. In this installation, made up of 272 individual sheets of paper, numbered consecutively and arranged in a grid, the artist vindicates the figure of the Mother, whilst addressing universal (and personal) themes such as maternity, religion, frustration and femininity, thereby interweaving a narrative on the domestic territory of the feminine with the canon of art history.