The Yellow is Following me
2019 | 2024
ongoing project
- The earth was born from stardust and light. And babies are born from mothers consisting of stardust and light. And so babies are made of stardust and light who will make babies of stardust and light.-
In April 2019 I went on a city trip to Berlin. After opening my suitcase I suddenly realised almost all the clothing I had brought was yellow.
Retrospectively, I found out the colour yellow had been a main theme in my life for two years – ever since the moment my mother died in 2017. I only became aware of this during my trip to Berlin. I considered whether this held a deeper symbolic meaning.
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After some research I found out, that of all the colors, yellow contains the most light. In the context and perspective of grieving for and the loss of my mother, this discovery gave me comfort and I saw great beauty in it. Life is just as inevitable as death. Babies will be born, flowers will bloom and the cells in my body will continue to renew.
After a while I discovered the Yellow had been a thread throughout my entire life. But strangely enough it was only after my mother died that I started feeling more attracted to yellow.
When my mother married my dad, her wedding bouquet was Yellow.
And when me and my twin brother were born, a little poem - my name and date of birth -were stitched onto a piece of fabric with yellow yarn.
When I drove back to the Netherlands from Berlin - I was obsessed with all the Yellow Rapeseed. I took a picture of it from the car. When I got home I looked in my birth book and I discovered something beautiful. After we were released from the hospital my mother took a picture of the yellow rapeseed on the way home. She describes how beautiful she thinks it is in our birth book.
Even the first house we lived in was a yellow from the outside.
'The Yellow is following me' is about finding comfort in times of grief - I really feel a connection through the deeper meaning of yellow and light, and my mother. After all - All life starts with light, and within darkness you can see the light even better