fifi rae
©2024
D’une mère à sa fille statement
My project focuses on this recipe my grandmother wrote for my mom when she moved to California in her twenties. The recipe is for a clafoutis aux poires (of pears), a French dessert my grandmother would make for me, my sister, and my mom every time we visited her in France. Whenever I think about her making it I can smell the clafoutis baking in the kitchen. My mom scanned this recipe to give to me but I could not understand my grandmother’s handwriting nor am I fluent in French, so I asked if my mom could bake one for me as I documented the process.
I wanted to depict this idea of passing down knowledge and skills, the intangible and tangible. Because I am adopted, I do not have any physical traits from my mom or grandmother, but I have their clothes, their recipes, and objects. I took self-portraits wearing all the clothes my mom and grandmother gave me. I also wanted to explore this distance between my grandmother due to the language barrier, the concept of translation, what gets lost in translation and inheritance. I wanted to honor my grandmother and how she shows her love, along with my mom, and acknowledge this barrier between us but how it does not take away from my love for her.
When I documented my mom making the clafoutis, she showed me the first cookbook she got when she moved to California where she stored this clafoutis artifact. The first page said, “Aux femmes que j’aime…” meaning “to the women I love.” We were shocked to see all the recipes, random photos, cards, and even a wedding invitation with a recipe written on the back. Everything was collected and preserved in her cookbook. I got a glimpse into my mom’s life before I knew her while she was struck with intense nostalgia from this worn-out, stained, and spine-less cookbook.
I experimented with editing images to make them light, grainy, and faded as I investigated the idea of memory, aging, and illegibility through translation. Finally, I made three photo books with golden rice paper covers featuring the full series of photographs and gave one to my mom as an addition to her cookbook memorabilia. I, too, dedicated this project and the first page of these handmade books “to the women I love.”