Vanderreydt
Benedicte
portrait
The woman is partially nude being covered with oysters. This oyster mask refers to what we eat on Fat Tuesday during Carnival of Binche. Binche is a small town in southern Belgium steeped in Northern European folklore.
In psychoanalysis of myths, men would seek to foreclose women since the dawn of time: to place her in this ‘in between women’, closed and silent.
This scene represents one of the windows of my family history. In the photograph the men are the majority of my family.