Postcards to you

“Postcards to you” began while my grandmother was ill, during a period marked by anxiety and distance. Unable to return home, I began collecting anonymous family photographs from flea markets and car boot sales, writing to her on the reverse — prompted by images that, at times, felt uncannily familiar, echoing fragments of our shared memories.

When I finally travelled back, she died as my plane landed in Romania.

In her absence, I continued working with images that were not mine — fragments of other lives in which I recognised gestures and presences that recalled her.

I buried these images in the ground at varying depths and for different lengths of time, exposing them to soil, moisture, insects, and decay. The process was slow and unpredictable. Each image returned altered, marked by time, erosion, and chance.

Through repetition, this act became a way of approaching what I could not face directly. In burying these images again and again, I found myself rehearsing the physical reality of loss — attempting, gradually, to become less afraid of it.

In Romania, mirrors are covered after death, so that the soul, thought to linger for forty days, does not become caught in its own reflection. A thin veil is placed over a mirror in the space, marking the threshold between the living and the dead.

The sound work draws from a spoken “deochi,” a protective ritual used to lift affliction caused by the “evil eye”, a belief in harm brought on by an envious or admiring gaze. My grandmother would recite this to me as a child, to ease pain or discomfort. It can only be learned by hearing and remembering.

The works that remain are not records of specific lives, but traces of an encounter between memory, absence, and the material world, existing somewhere between preservation and disappearance.

Sound : “Deochi” — voice Alexandra Văcăroiu, music & video Joseph Dylan Fawcett, produced by James Blackshaw