Artist’s Statement
I was born in a country that no longer exists and given a name common to
so many other girls. I have walked the streets of my hometown wearing the red
scarf around my neck and from the bottom of my soul believed in the ideals
that
were served to me (can lies become the silver platter?).
Did I really believe in this without doubt?
Yes, without any doubt.
Photography is able to contain and mimic the same hypocrisy that
colored my upbringing. In photographs, wilting flowers bloom long after they
have
withered. When the blood in my images still looks vivid and alive, the blood
in reality has long since congealed and clotted, much like the ideals that
once were so vivid in my youth.
I live in the land of the blond. Here, diversity is rendered invisible.
What
does conformity do for us? We are safe, everyone is like everyone else – blond.
We have our homes, our lives, and nobody interferes. We are safe from
conflict and confrontation. We are blond. We are blind.
Do you want what I want?
Then I will have to aspire to these things alone.
Do you see what I see?
I’ll show you!
Something that we can both feel. But do we?
Something you don’t want to do and I don’t either.
It does not exist unless you choose to make it exist.
I do not want to tell you any more,
because you will not believe me.
By Nathalia Edenmont
October 2002