Estelle Arnauts
Belgium I 2001 I arnauts.estelle2001@outlook.be
When I was 2.5 years, my parents got divorced. This, of course, did a lot to how I see ‘marriage’ now. It made me feel confused and estranged from the concept. Naturally, other people in my life were in (happy) marriages, but nonetheless did the concept feel like something that wasn’t meant to be in my personal life. This belief that marriage wasn’t for me was later reinforced by a difficult relation with self-love. Marriage always felt like a fairy tale for me. Something that sounds beautiful and that created a sense of longing. Longing for that ‘happy ever after’ and for that ‘ideal of love’: a pure connection. But with that also came the thought that fairy tales are just stories and not reality. I want to capture the tension between desire and disbelief that I associate with the theme of marriage. How despite the idea of ‘happy ever after’ it being very attractive and desirable, there is still skepticism towards it. Therefore, I would like to combine elements of fairy tales and folk art with images that might not immediately represent that idea of ‘happy ever after’. This way I hope to show beauty, confusion and pain all in one.
