ALLWAYS

2026

180 cm x 117 cm

baby shirts, embroidery thread, wadding

My installation shows the intertwining of the past and the present, while the traces of generations are connected within it. For many decades, baby shirts were a staple of young children's wardrobes. These garments have been collected in our family for generations, bearing the traces of these many generations. These small garments, finely crafted and centuries old, are still in perfect condition today, but they were no longer used by my own children. They were defeated by practicality; contemporary, modern children's clothes pushed them out. In my installation, the tightly joined shirts are already completely deprived of their function. Their being taken out of use is expressed by the clearly disabling gesture of sewing them together. The first marks made by my youngest child are embroidered onto the composition made up of shirts. Although the bold, irregular, and drastic visuality of the drawn lines contrasts with the refined world of the shirts, young children probably started to familiarize themselves with various mark-making tools with similar lines a hundred years ago. This is how the traces of the past and the present come together in my work. The visual contrasts reveal the harmony of the cycle of life.

Photo: Dániel Bogdán Szőke, Zsuzsanna G. Szabó