Patchwork (2017-ongoing)
Nowadays more parents and children are growing up together within a family construction, we call the Patchwork family. Being confronted with such a family construction herself, Gjaltema is trying to reflect on the continuing shifting identities and underlying tensions within such a family. The series ‚Patchwork’ consists of different collages or installations, where she made use of her own Polaroid pictures she made of her family members and their surroundings over the last years. She enlarged the Polaroid’s and cut out the figures, which leaves the frame, where she combines the frames into new portraits. These portraits are like layered identities, where the different family members become part of a new construction like a handmade patchwork.
Eva Gjaltema makes public what in the first places seems private. Time, memories and transcience are tangible in her works and she discusses themes like identity, family relationships and positions. She helds an interest in the influence of the history on the present. Gjaltema works with different types of media, from found footage, analog and digital photography, collage, installation and the book/photoalbum, where an autobiographical urgency is mainly her point of departure.
www.evagjaltema.com