Kirsten Heshusius - Triptich
Heshusius’ work is based in the metaphysical. The ritualistic aspect of performance takes on a great role in her work. In her autobiographical work Triptich she investigates the impact her family history has had on her life and her own struggle to connect to her ancestors.
The content is as well related to the the function of a living room for worldly affairs the Old Church had in the Middle Ages, as to her late grandmother who was the daughther of the Sint Nicolaas church’s sexton in Benschop. From her mothers dead at the age of seven, till her marriage in the last winter of World War II, Heshusius' grandmother spent many hours cleaning the church by hand, on her knees. By helping her father without any complaint she hoped to receive some motherlove in return, but unfortunately didn’t succeed.
Heshusius’ actions begin from the concrete and become increasingly more abstract. Wearing a dress that is originally from her grandmother she rubs a bread over her head in an attempt to comfort herself. In the second part, when entering the room, the smell and the image of a flowerfield gives the audience a feeling of being alive. It is that youthly feeling that Heshusius uses to refer to the struggle at the end of childhood and the artificiality of beauty by cutting every single flower. Part three is the inevitable search for transformation in identity. By wrapping the body in wool and applying lipstick, Heshusius wants to symbolize domestic adaptation, imitation only enlarges the feeling of being adrift.
The audience tends to become more engaged and empathetic with her struggle to connect to her grandmother’s struggle. She takes on an other-worldly look that conjure the fleeting thought that the grandmother replaced her in the performance.