The Magnolia Grows at Night
16mm color film (11:05), B&W film loop (00:19),
slide projectors (1:09), metal fence, engraved copper plate
slide projectors (1:09), metal fence, engraved copper plate
How would you dictate a woman's future?
Is it through mother's ability to carry herself?
Can you help mother not forget things?
Will my mother forget about me?
How old do you think the tree is?
Can you guess how old I am?
The work began with letters between my oma, Elisabeth Souw and her Dutch nun friend, Zr. Edmundis Verstappen, who did missionary work in the Dutch East Indies. The friendship started after my grandmother delivered a dozen eggs to the monastery, and she was asked to work at a hospital in Lahat, Sumatra. I have been keeping these letters for a decade since my grandmother died, while her children emptied her house. My oma’s house no longer exists.
In 2024, I visited the convent in Maastricht, where my oma's friend used to live. There, I found a community of Indonesian nuns caring for elderly Dutch nuns. A large Magnolia tree stood inside the convent's garden, witnessing the care duties and devoted lives these women have chosen to live.
The constellation inside the space brings together my oma's past, which extends to my friendship with the Dutch and Indonesian nuns living at this convent, and the current state of my mother's memory loss while I am not with her.
During this process, I've been confronted with questions of mortality, the role of care, and the caregiver.
Who cares for whom?
How does the role of caregiver shift over the generations?
What weight of guilt must each daughter who leaves their home bear?
Mother: On the small TV, a B&W 16mm loop of Fransisca's mother's hair being stroked, a gesture of care.
A metal sculpture is placed in the pathway outside Fransisca's studio, referencing the black fences installed in the garden of an elderly home to prevent patients with Alzheimer's disease from getting lost. On the copper plate is a question that you can never ask people with dementia.
Public Program
Reading Performance
As part of the film and installation. Fransisca hosted a reading together with Zr. Terry Novaria Mulijadi, CB. Both Chinese-Indonesian, they left their mother and mother tongue at different times. Together, they collaborate on making a film inside a convent in Maastricht, where the day is structured and rules are meant to be obeyed. While making this film, both found friendship and solidarity with each other as a daughter in their family. This reading performance brought the two voices in an exchange on womanhood, care, their shared histories, and opening up spaces to the power dynamics within image-making.
