Do you remember that safe feeling from the past, on your mother’s lap? Exactly that feeling, but with an adult body, photographer Roos van Geffen brings back to her photo series Mother -wick. Because who is still on the age of 30, 40 or even 50 to Mama’s lap? Right, nobody. Unless Van Geffen asks.
On Mother’s Day, art space transformed deep into Emmen into a photo studio. Mothers with their adult children, all 25 years or older, took a seat on a chair. Or rather: the mothers took a seat, and the children, on their lap.
“You don’t just hug your mother in full dedication, or sit on her lap,” says Van Geffen. “I actually facilitate that.” But it’s not easy. “It often starts with” do I have to sit like that? “, And then they look at me. But I want them to focus on each other.”
For Amarens and her mother Petra it started a bit uncomfortable. “It was special and also a bit uncomfortable,” says Amarens. “You have to look: how did that go together again?”
“The physical discomfort gets worse the longer you are,” adds Petra, “but you get used to it. At one point it was good for me, and then she didn’t like it.” She laughs: “Maybe we will do it again at home.”
Van Geffen is not only looking for a nice picture. She wants to record the story between mother and child. “Sometimes the child seems to comfort the mother. Sometimes you see that the mother is clinging. That primordial relationship fascinates me.”
Mother -wick is part of the exhibition I get away herebut for Van Geffen it is also a personal investigation into relationships, love and farewell. Earlier she filmed her father on his deathbed and for another project she made a picture of her mother with PFAS polluted clay.