I'm a snail says Venus

Total amnesia. A life extinguished, a new life created from the fragments of another. That's what happened to my mother when I was one year old. What does it feel like when your own self no longer emerges from your inner world, but from the stories of a loved one? Her identity - once a web of thoughts, feelings and dreams - became a vessel filled with my father's memories and wishes.

For me, all that remained of her was a shadow. Her self was replaced by my father's interpretations, her story became a construct of scraps of memory, distorted by his ideas. Are these interpretations, however honest they may be, not always inaccurate approximations? What remains of my “real” mother?
As a daughter, I have to rely on very little to reconstruct her “true identity”, always exposed to the danger of idealization. Am I not creating new distorted images? In a fog of false turns, I have to choose my own interpretation.

This project is an exploration of identity, memory and the fragility of truth. What remains of a person when their story is told by others? Are these stories, even if they are intended with affection, a form of manipulation? How can we live with the fact that every reconstruction is also an invention?

I went in search of clues: through old diaries, through fragments of a woman who is a stranger to me. I found her - a contrast of fire and tenderness, impulsiveness and thoughtfulness. But with every new detail I discovered, I lost a piece of the mother I had known until then.