An afternoon with Sara Cucè

Earlier this year I invited Sara Cuse into my home to take pictures of me. Over the last 10 years, I have collected objects and materials from my travels or for my artwork. I like history, I like objects and what more fun than to be photographed with my favourite things in my favourite place; home. This experience was not just about documenting the things that I love and treasure, it was about what these objects mean to me and how the act of collecting has changed my life. The combination of the two cannot be separated, I am very much a part of the objects I have collected and each one tells a story about my past and lived experiences.



Here is what Sara had to say about the project:

“I recently started a small series, in which I’m reflecting on the motifs behind the act of collecting, the psychology of it, the concept of possession and the quest or the hunt to find an object or a memento from a specific time and place. The person introducing me to this idea and the subject of this series is Amy. She allowed me into her intimate space and, as an incredible artist who collects bones, shells, corals, sponges, stones and many other things, she also makes beautiful artworks, prints and installations with them; she introduced me to her personal history of collecting.

Amy has a visceral relationship with collecting, strongly connected with her personal history, subconsciously revealing so much about her.
She regularly walks across the river Thames collecting bones of any type shape and size.

She studies them, she guesses their history, and they became hers. When she travels, she brings back mementoes, objects that have a past history, but which now have a new one, a life moving forwards, creating a new history. They are fragments of her journey.

As she prepares for the shoot, she digs into her family history and how the act of collecting is fundamental for her and other members of her family. They all collect, but in different ways. Collecting means many things for many people, but for Amy, collecting is her way of having agency in her own life. The possession of something that she can decide to take home or throw away. By collecting objects of interest she has power and control, filling in the gaps of when she felt she didn’t have that in her life, her possessions, or her body.

As she undresses, she notes how liberated she feels, free.

Amy is reclaiming the power and control over what happens to her body and not.”