AUDIO
MAGICAL WOMEN
Audio 13/14
13.
Gillian Wearing
0:00
AUDIO
Gillian Wearing
What can an object say about a person? What does a hand reveal about a life? Gillian Wearing poses such questions—and answers them with works that replace traditional portraits.
The piece My Mother’s Charms is a portrait without a face. An oversized charm bracelet hung on the wall brings together objects—charms—that memorialize the artist’s mother: a dress, a watch, a Valentine, jewelry, photos. The artist reproduced the objects at larger or smaller scale using a 3D printer. This makes them seem familiar and strange at the same time. The word charm can refer to such small pendants, but also to a magic spell, or to personal graces. Wearing plays with this ambiguity. The charms speak of intimacy, memory, and origin—not based on external facial features, but using objects that bear meaning, sometimes on a deeply personal level.
In My Misfortune (left) and My Fortune (right) the artist presents resin casts of her own hands. On them she has written sentences that fortune tellers “read from her palm” during anonymous visits, predicting her future. The left hand bears sinister statements, the right hand hopeful ones. The prophecies contradict each other and, in so doing, reveal just how much we believe in good luck and misfortune. And how desperately we long for security. In a figurative sense, Wearing inscribes the predictions herself: her hands become vehicles for doubt, wishful thinking, and self-empowerment.
Wearing illustrates how we form our identities: through stories, attributions, and the things we carry with us. Her works shift our gaze—away from the face, and toward gestures, objects, signs. They reveal how deeply personal memories and social perceptions are intertwined. At the same time, these works quietly address themes of superstition and questions of fate.
The piece My Mother’s Charms is a portrait without a face. An oversized charm bracelet hung on the wall brings together objects—charms—that memorialize the artist’s mother: a dress, a watch, a Valentine, jewelry, photos. The artist reproduced the objects at larger or smaller scale using a 3D printer. This makes them seem familiar and strange at the same time. The word charm can refer to such small pendants, but also to a magic spell, or to personal graces. Wearing plays with this ambiguity. The charms speak of intimacy, memory, and origin—not based on external facial features, but using objects that bear meaning, sometimes on a deeply personal level.
In My Misfortune (left) and My Fortune (right) the artist presents resin casts of her own hands. On them she has written sentences that fortune tellers “read from her palm” during anonymous visits, predicting her future. The left hand bears sinister statements, the right hand hopeful ones. The prophecies contradict each other and, in so doing, reveal just how much we believe in good luck and misfortune. And how desperately we long for security. In a figurative sense, Wearing inscribes the predictions herself: her hands become vehicles for doubt, wishful thinking, and self-empowerment.
Wearing illustrates how we form our identities: through stories, attributions, and the things we carry with us. Her works shift our gaze—away from the face, and toward gestures, objects, signs. They reveal how deeply personal memories and social perceptions are intertwined. At the same time, these works quietly address themes of superstition and questions of fate.