Exploring Childhood on Episode 4 of the Heartbreak Series
This episode takes a different turn in its approach to heartbreak, rather than look at romantic or political loss it explores nostalgia for a lost time. Our earliest experiences of heartbreak can be traced to childhood, a period that we cannot return to.
In the episode we explore a psychologists perspective on the necessary heartbreak that comes from the separating out of self as we leave childhood, and its accompanying rites of passage. We also look at the material culture associated with childhood from a curator’s viewpoint, specifically historic objects that convey the heartbreak of parents who cannot raise their own children and are separated from them. Finally, we take in an architect’s perspective on how a series of dolls' houses are being used to overcome these degrees of separation and make space for individuals within communities.
The episode is largely inspired by the works of the artists Fusun Onur and Farah Khelil. Fusun Onur’s pieces explore the fragility of the domestic sphere through: mixed media embroidered frames, a sculpture that incorporates a music box’s spinning mechanism and even her own childhood dolls house. Farah Khelil also plays on nostalgia, many of her works repurpose materials such as tourist souvenir postcards of her hometown Carthage. The transitory nature of childhood finds an echo in the city’s own transitions.
In this episode I am joined by a range of experts, the psychotherapist Dr Owen Madden, curator at The Foundling Museum Kathleen Palmer and the architect and instigator behind The Giant Dolls House project Catja de Haas.
Overview:
[2:17] Dr Owen Madden explains how our childhood experience effects our emotional development, and states that there is “a very painful separation out of seeing something positive in the loss of childhood.” He follows that the main scope of childhood is to be loved, but that there are always relational interruptions - with the most devastating cases being children who experience the loss of a society.
Dr Madden is a psychotherapist associated with The School of Life in London, his research has focused on how we can find the authentic self and on understanding intimacy. You can read more about his work here.
Image: Taken of miniatures in the artist Fusun Onur’s home in Istanbul (2019), image credit Ali Kazma.
[10:55] Kathleen Palmer explores the material culture surrounding childhood, and specifically responds to The Foundling Museum’s collections where the story of childhood is more complex and the relationship to objects an institutional, rather than a personal one.
Palmer is the Curator for Exhibitions and Displays at The Foundling Museum. Her curatorial interests are around art and society - particularly art that has a strong narrative element, or related to history and memory. You can see the examples of tokens that she discusses, and read more about their history, here.
[22:16] Dr Catja de Haas shows how dolls’ houses can be used as both a metaphor for the importance of a home for all, and as a method of creating a community for all. Her Giant Dolls’ House Project combines her academic interests with a community arts project that has engaged with displaced people, students, artists, and curators all over.
De Haas is an architect originating from the Netherlands. For her PhD at UCL, she became interested in the idea of the home and how dolls’ houses intersect with this. Her architectural practice looks at architecture on all scales: from buildings, to pieces of furniture, art installations, urban plans, ideas and concepts.
Follow @giantdollshouse on Instagram for updates on future version of the global project.