Just living is not enough, said the butterfly...
...One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower. -Hans Christian Andersen
Home means something different to everyone. I always work with things in pairs or with contradictions and polarity, where one thing becomes it's other. Or paradoxes. I believe you can never have one, without also having the other, in one way or another. We might not always be aware - but it is always there. It is the other that draws the outline of the one. Most people know the feeling of “when you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home”. So to have a place you feel at home, it helps to have been away, and here I have chosen the last part of having been away the returning. The returning is widely an ignored or neglected word, everyone these days are so focused on going somewhere.
Of course, expecting home as only being possible existing in or as a location, whether it is more or less well known, is horribly narrow-minded and limited. As it is said “home is not where you live, but where they understand you”. Sometimes, when we think back it might not always be the most luxurious places we have lived that stand out, because "a house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”
Sometimes it is said that a “home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to". If that’s the case, I personally have to wait and see. I have left home and allthough, I'm not 18 anymore I don’t think I'm old enough to be called old. But I don’t think it is that important. I don’t think we shall wait for or expect to find the right place or solution to find our happiness; I rather think we should find inspiration from the butterfly: It goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes." After all “we are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home”. So to choose to put the butterflies on the wall was a symbol of contradictions of the word home and returning. One of the most beautiful descriptions of a paradox I know, and still makes perfect sense is about:
"The butterfly that counts not months but moments, and has time enough"
I push my hand up to the sky, Shade my eyes from the sun, as the dust settles around me, suddenly night time has begun. You knew you were lost, but you carried on anyway, you knew you had no time, but you let the days drift away.
The words above is from the band Editors song the racing rats. I was reminded about these words while making this work. The clue about making this work is returning. The thing is that I was born here, in one of the flats surrounding the garden. Below is a picture from that time.
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