Marie Wintzer - A Date and Place of Birth

[cheryl penn]

Its Marie’s birthday today. Birthdays are wonderful – they’re the day we began.   The day we begin to be formed through cultural influences, family ties, history and genetics.  The beginning of the search for personal identity. Serendipitously today, through a booklet Marie sent me I googled Alsace in France, a place of meaning for Marie. And wow – to come from a land that is so ancient, that its current population has blood strains going back to 1500BC – that for me is amazing, coming from South Arica where everything is SO NEW in comparison!

And her work, it echoes this. It speaks of the language struggles resulting from a complex history.  A heavy history.

Just in the 19^th – 20^th centuries alone the land and people went back and forth four times between France and Germany. Complex times for sure. 

She writes that her grand parents were German, then French then German, then French again.  From one day to another they were not allowed to speak their native language anymore. The result? A crisis of identity.  A human induced Babel. Confusion.

Language painted out, hidden, layered, treasured in books so old time has aged their pages.  

But still the band played on.

"We did not dare to believe the extermination… the pain was so deep and so sharp it was necessary to hide it, to prevent oneself of expressing it, in order to be able to live” (Extract from a letter to Jean Claude).

The denial of language use. By force. Today, just because, for no real reason, we shorten and chop and deny Language its proper use. We cut it and curtail it and ignore it, decimating it - to what?  

Marie’s conclusion :

Le Particularisme

The Sense of Identity.

What more will be lost?

 

[Marie Wintzer]

You can't see it but I'm blushing now...

Thank you!

[cheryl penn]

I forgot to say this about Marie's work. For me its a very sucessful melding of two sorts of cultures - European and Japanese. Work where an artist is removed from her own homeland   and placed in a foreign place, but still manages to find her own personal artistic voice. Marie uses 'found' materials and combines them in a minimalist, but  always very poignant way. Its a good example (to me) of using and combining foreign and familiar objects where no one voice is louder than another? We are just aware of Marie's voice :-) - FAB for sure!

[Marie Wintzer]

Thank you!!

[Jen Staggs]

Felizitaciones! Happy Birthday!

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

For Marie,

from the ancient today land of many, many identities...

when is birthday: We DANCE!!! OPA!

Happy Birthday, Marie

(...beautiful blog, Cheryl)

[Marie Wintzer]

It IS so this! brilliant choice!!

(and thanks Bruno)

[cheryl penn]

Marie - another extract from the book (I dont know it at ALL!) Modeling the Stellar Environment :

"Life was beginning again for us in 1944 and if our county invited us to find again our place in the society, we were still dazzled as if going out in full light after a long path in a tunnel."

Just sounds SO THIS!!!

Bruno - I ONLY know DRAMATIC Portuguese people!!! They're FAB!!! An excess of identity??? A historical weight? Sounds .....

[Marie Wintzer]

I like that Extract, it fits so well here, what is the Letter to Jean Claude?

[Marie Wintzer]

DW, Thank you mon cher :-))

Cheryl, what a wonderful B-day present! Thank you... In a way I feel more Alsacian than French, even if I am both. Do I have two or even three identities? :-o OMG  :-)) Maybe a mixture of all this.

You got it absolutely right, Alsace is probably the Babel of Europe! 

Oh, and the pics look fab too with that dark halo!!

[De Villo Sloan]

happy birth day cb