Ueda Takumi “infantile”

In Andersen’s story “The Little Mermaid,” a 15-year-old mermaid turns into a human under the conditions that she’s to lose her voice, her family and even her life - if she does not get loved.
However after the tragedy, she throws herself into the sea and gets dissolved into sea foam. Even though she gained an immortal soul and an ethereal spirits for this, she was also given the challange of watching over the kind of love between mothers and their children. What does it mean to order a young 15-year-old girl, who’s neither an adult nor a child, to acquire the compassionate gaze of a mother though?

Even in a number of other myths and fables, unreasonable assignments have often been imposed onto women - the myth of the charming mermaids, the mission of Pandora, the sin of Magdalene, alike. By re-drawing such figures I have been trying to deconstruct and reveal their inner selves, as well as the irrationality that exists inside me. Nevertheless, how does a “mother” looks like in our times?

I have been painting through the iconography of the “Virgin and Child” in order to find out the exact figure of the “Mother,” but it seems as though i was still unable to grasp the true nature of the “Mother.” If the gaze of a mother was attainable to everyone just like the hardships that were given to that Little Mermaid, then I hope that my act of painting will be seen as a discipline in order for me to acquire that gaze.

- Ueda Takumi