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Burning Pain

2017 Competition entry

Petra Schutte

Details:
Signed
Weaved hair on linen
53 cm x 59 cm

Description:

Here Petra's own hair has been used and weaved through linen. She has always been fascinated by her hair: the colour, the then long length, the weight of it and the feel of the silky strands when she brushes her fingers through it. However, there is always a certain amount of guilt when she appreciate and flaunts her hair. She has always wondered what cancer patients go through when they lose their hair.  A person's hair becomes an extension of that person. The pulling out of her own hair and not cutting it out, symbolises the hair loss of cancer patients, but also the extreme amount of pain that they go through. She admits she will never know the full amount of pain that they have to go through. 

But for herself, in the moment of pulling out clumps of her own hair, she experienced a burning pain that led to exhaustion to the point of being out of breath.  The weaving of her hair through the linen was a peaceful act and moment. Cancer is not a beautiful thing and will never be seen as a beautiful thing.  The weaved hair artwork is a trophy-like piece for all the cancer patients and cancer survivors.  The artwork is Petra giving something small of herself back to cancer patients where what she had experienced in the process of making the artwork, can never compare with what cancer patients have to go through.