Empowerment through Playing: Playing with Roles, Photos, Texts, Memories, Cards, and Co-players

Abstract

In this visual essay, I present some key thoughts that were essential for the birth of my visual-pedagogical installation The Presence of the Absent—The Memory Game (1998). This photo-installation is a playful window into my life; a constant trial to intertwine my multiple roles. Being a woman, a devoted art educator, a researcher, a wife, a friend, and a mother of three children, making art in my case means combining all of these aspects in my work. The Memory Game consists of 40 pairs of cards with photos and texts (see Figure 1). It plays with issues of growing up as a girl using photographs and memory work to explore the fugitive borderline between private and public.