Forty Two , 2020
29.7 x 42 cm (h x w)
Pencil and gold leaf on paper

I wanted to produce an image of the archetypal mother, connected to her children in the most intimate and direct way, through her strands of hair. Her hair is like hundreds of umbilical chords, she cares and is connected in not one way but hundreds or thousands of ways. Like hair, these connections can get tangled and complex. These mothers, if we are lucky, surround us.

My mother is abroad in Denmark, she mourns that she cannot see us and I long to travel to see her in the beautiful seaside town of Tisvildeleje where she goes every summer, including this one. I used to go there every summer as a child. The road ended by the sea and I used to think as a child that Tisvildeleje was literally the end of the world, the end point, the final stop, but in a beautiful and fulfilled way. That place is my mother and my mother is that place, a physical womb and an Eden that I cannot go to for the first time in twenty-five years.

My wife has two of her children near and one abroad. She does everything for them every moment of every day. Her emotions are played on the strands of their wellbeing like a finely tuned violin. Every day I feel that there are these taut strands of connection, the constant backdrop to our every thought and feeling.

Exhibited by:

Ben Uri Research Unit

Other works by David Breuer-Weil (b. 1965)

Zodiac , 2021
118.8 x 168.2 cm (h x w)
Pencil and gold leaf on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit
The Song of the Goat , 2021
118.8 x 168.2 cm (h x w)
Pencil and gold leaf on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit
Slavery , 2021
118.8 x 168.2 cm (h x w)
Pencil and gold leaf on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit
Four Sons , 2021
118.8 x 168.2 cm (h x w)
Pencil and gold leaf on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit
Ten Plagues , 2021
118.8 x 168.2 cm (h x w)
Pencil and gold leaf on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit

More from Ben Uri Research Unit

Refugee Child on the Road , 2021
60 x 42 cm (h x w)
Acrylic and pastel on paper
Ben Uri Research Unit
Journey , 2021
58 x 60 cm (h x w)
Collage
Ben Uri Research Unit
At the Border , 2021
95 x 107 cm (h x w)
Collage
Ben Uri Research Unit
Mother , 2021
58 x 60 cm (h x w)
collage
Ben Uri Research Unit
Child Refugee in the Camp , 2019
35 x 45 cm (h x w)
acrylic and pastel
Ben Uri Research Unit