Delta
Hannah Modigh
Editons Bessard
Limited Edition of 500
Hard wooden cover with signed C Print
113 pages
115 x 300 mm
ISBN 979109106710
Text by the publisher Pierre Bressard, inspired by the images in Delta;
”In the Waters of time. My childhood tree was about to fall. Just like my grandmother who remained beautiful until her dying moments. When she passed away, I took off my clothes and I looked at her totally naked. We’re the same I thought: “two female bodies, one vertical and the other lying down, both fragile yet full of strength”. When I was young I used to jump off the dock in the lake, to relentlessly test the soundness of silence. Up north where we used to live, there were many skies to dive in and waters to glance at like mirrors. “I’ve traveled; I’ve seen deserts and uninhabited valleys. I’ve seen fires, graves and asphyxiating forests.” My breasts became the centre of the universe and my body changed as I became pregnant.Milk flowed on my past. I turned back toward the sand, and I buried myself in for a few minutes. No, it was not a dream. In my lingering footprints, there was enough space for two. Summer came quickly, too quickly. I looked around me: men were falling, drunk and full of melancholy. Puppies nibbled each other to immediately fall asleep. Gardeners kept on working to put nature in order.In Africa at the same time, fishermen were throwing their fishing nets. There was less fish in here, they may have preferred to be turned into salmons. I found a small island where I could finally have a rest. I couldn’t stop thinking. About my mother holding the hand of her own in the hospital bed. Of those crayfishing parties with my brothers and sisters. Of the floating bodies on the Ganges river. Those incense sticks, those prayers, and those waterfalls. When I realized death was coming, I built a delta, a gathering place. It was a crossover space, a floating and fertile environment. We can call it a book but it’s more than that. It’s a carpet of prayers, an open arch to the beyond. It’s also a path of confluences between my deceased ancestress and my child. They have never seen each other but I’m an artist and I introduce them by reconciling together the dead and the living.“I’ve mixed roots, places and faces and I’ve looked at them together, at the same time. I’ve denied my goodbyes, you see, to create my own rite. I breastfeed you my child and you give me the world whereas in the next room your grandmother is agonizing.”We’re not alone with those rocks, skies, the small stones along the side of the roads which form a tumulus. The earth is frozen; the humus is frozen, but from the pain gathered by the souls in the service, there comes a canticle of glory. Considering life is fantastic until demise and there is no still-life but everywhere the most unnoticed vivid colours. It’s time to leave, it’s time to give birth, to take a closer look at yourself and dive with voluptuousness in the river of time:“We are the heart of the volcano.We are sacred. We are footprints in the snow. We are a tree of several hundred years baptized by the rain.” Today, like every single other day, I took some pictures. There was wind in the wild grasses and I felt close to the wild. At that moment, I forgot who I was, the story of my life, and the story of my family’s women, their tragedies and their joys. I was alone, I was nobody, I was a thousand years old. I cowered to better vanish and I suddenly became pure vibration: nothing, everything. I took pictures of what I couldn’t see. Everywhere around me dusk was spreading its veil. Then I ran to the unnamed, something with hardly a physical appearance. It was a little child; it was an animal, a leathery skin. It was my life. It was the first time I understood it.”
About the Artist
Hannah Modigh was born 1980 in Stockholm but spent big parts of her childhood in India and on Österlen in the south of Sweden. She has during her adult life lived in Paris and Copenhagen and is now living and working in Stockholm.
About the Publisher
Editions Bessard is a paris-based independant publishing house created by pierre bessard in 2011. Focusing on working with artists, writers and curators to realise intellectually challenging projects in book form.
