Mother Tongue explores language, ancestry and cultural transformation through jewellery, sculpture, ceramics and installation.
The project developed from research into the deep history of language and the movement of cultures across Europe, beginning with research into the survival of ancient words and extending into the archaeological evidence surrounding Yamnaya expansion, the horse, the wheel and changing systems of power.
Alongside this research, the work draws on a longstanding interest in ancestral forms, ancient symbols and the material culture of prehistoric Europe. Goddess forms, cave markings, words, horses, solar imagery and materials such as clay, wax and metal become ways of exploring what is carried forward, what is transformed, and what remains.
Mother Tongue is not a reconstruction of the past, but a contemporary response to fragments of language, imagery and material culture that have survived across deep time.
