VISITING BERTHA, 2015-2016
Digital prints
As a child, I was fascinated and terrified by Bertha Mason, the first wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's
1847 novel "Jane Eyre". She was the perfect embodiment of Gothic horror: the dark secret, the other, the one
beyond reason and sense, the cause of mysterious and horrifying events, the insurmountable obstacle to everyone's
happiness. Now, reflecting upon this character and bearing in mind that everything I, as a reader, learnt about
Bertha's past was from Rochester's perspective, I experience a different kind of horror – horror caused by trying
to imagine what it meant to be labeled as a 'mad woman' in early 19th century, far away from home and family,
locked up in a room where I would have to spend years with no hope of change.
The sculptures in the photographs were created using random scraps of material found in the room I was in at the time.
As I was making them, I tried to imagine myself in Bertha's situation and to create embodiments of my emotional state.
