ladybird ladybird, 2022

Maikäferchen, Maikäferchen

INVITED - GERMANY

Maikäferchen, Maikäferchen, fliege weg!
Dein Häusgen brennt,
Dein Mütterchen flennt,
Dein Vater sitzt auf der Schwelle,
Flieg in Himmel aus der Hölle

Maybug, Maybug, fly away! Your house is on fire, Your mother is weeping, Your father is sitting on the threshold, Fly to heaven from hell

Ladybird Ladybird is in remembrance of the 1.5 million innocent babies and children who were murdered during the Holocaust because they were Jewish. Thirty young lives have been commemorated in this artwork, each had been photographed with their favourite toy, be it a tricycle, a bucket and spade, a teddy or a doll. The stories of their short lives have been hand stitched onto cloth, and stand as a testament to what evil can achieve when it is left unchecked.

COMMENTS

  • Powerful, beautiful work. Through your creativity and talent, you invite us in, beckon us closer to look at the hard things in a new way. Thank you for telling these stories. We need to hear them

  • Beautiful and moving as ever. You are a brilliant artist and storyteller

  • Heartbreakingly beautiful work. You are so brave in your determination to bring these atrocities to the public fore

  • Your work brought tears to my eyes. So tragic, such loss…

  • Wonderful work, so beautifully created, so tragic, heartbreaking

  • Hard to comprehend, so glad that their lives are being commemorated

  • Amazing body of work and truth telling too

  • Heartbreaking. I’ve got two granddaughters aged 3 and 6 - it really hits home. There is such honesty and humanity in your work

  • Stunning on so many levels. Your work as always is amazing

  • Oh just looking at those little faces it is so heartbreaking

  • Such important work

  • Another incredibly moving piece of work. So unbearably sad to think of all the innocent Holocaust victims, young and old. But especially poignant to show the images of the children. Every one an unspeakable tragedy

  • Beautiful work and so important to remember

  • Of all your soulful work this piece has reduced me to tears - so unspeakably dreadful to slaughter these innocent babies, what evil

  • You are so strong to be able to put your heart and soul into such heartbreaking work. So important and we must never forget those little souls

  • Your work is so important, beautiful as ever but so terribly sad. This work is particularly poignant and has moved me to tears but it is a story that needs telling again and again

  • To ‘like’ this seems an inappropriate response. Thank you for your sensitive and exquisite work

  • Such a powerful piece

  • More exquisite work. It is so heartbreaking to thing of what happened then and your passion is laudable. I hope one day there is a museum, or a collection in one, just for your amazing work

Measurement: 47cm x 20cm x 4cm

Process: Hand stitch, digital fabric printing

Materials: Vintage German wooden fairy tale puzzle, textile, silk threads

Exhibited in:

Fairy Tales, Myths and Stories, (Mächen, Mythen und Geschichten), Galerie Handwerk, Munich, Germany (3 May - 11 June 2022)

Fabricated? Solo Exhibition, London, England (1 October 2024 - 31 January 2025)