alice connew

Forty Three, 2013-15

The images in Forty Three were made during a freezing day in the middle of Berlin’s worst winter in forty-three years. Meanings evolved as Alice have spent time with the work; looking, selecting, editing and sequencing. This particular day of work — January 2013 — began as a momentary, snapshot distraction from the bleakness that had settled into Berlin, and developed into a project about the displacement and loneliness endured when one moves to a new country. The protagonist — an armless, child mannequin, found in a disheveled Berlin alleyway — was used first for Alice’s own amusement but as the day’s chill persisted, bit by bit he developed into a metaphor for her early experiences of an uncharted city that would become her home.

While she is keen to rebuff the obvious narrative of ‘lonely doll in snow reflects lonely woman in alien city’, Alice cannot deny that what began as a playful day with a found piece of detritus turned into an expression of unease and isolation. This mood parallels her first six months in Berlin.