Lisa De Boeck was five years old when her mother, Marilène Coolens, began photographing her. On the table, on the bed or hiding in between the curtains, her daughter becomes the sole actress of an improvised theatre. Disguised with make-up and wigs sometimes, she plays scenes from television series, movies or fairy tales under Marilène’s watchful eye. This creative complicity titled The Umbilical Vein stretches from 1990 to 2003 and becomes their only analogue image archive.
What began as a spontaneous game that served as an intimate exhaust valve in the form of a family record, subsequently explores another dimension during the digital era. Memymom, contracted from “me and my mom” is an artistic concept born in 2004 between the two self-taught photographers both living and working in Brussels: a mother (Marilène Coolens, 1953) and her daughter (Lisa De Boeck, 1985). Under the moniker of memymom, both decide to be in front and behind the camera.
From 2010 to 2015, their second chapter The Digital Decade bears witness of the desire to create semi-staged dreamscapes with a more readily symbolic content. This in places that lend themselves to the most diverse scenography or in settings emotionally charged for the two protagonists, such as the family home. Where sensuality has superseded innocence, the photographs now have a mirroring effect and deal with subjects such as memory, metamorphosis, personal identity and the bond between mother and daughter.
In full creation of their third chapter Somewhere Under The Rainbow 2016-2018, this formula is supplemented with current themes. By deepening the themes of their works in international settings (Brussels, California), a complex but engaging series of portraits was made. Like a movie that is condensed to a single frame but exudes the depth and meaning of a drawn-out story, transcending the relationship between these two women where family ties and creativity are fully intertwined.
Book
memymom is the name used by the artists’ collective and mother-and-daughter team Marilène Coolens (1953) and Lisa De Boeck (1985) since 2004. The seeds of the project were planted in the 1990s, when the photographer Marilène Coolens was taking snapshots of her growing daughter and had her play out scenes from cartoons, fairy tales and TV shows, in the hope of stimulating little Lisa’s imagination. The result was an intimate family archive of analogue photographs, which memymom later collected under the title ‘The Umbilical Vein’. As the daughter grew up, however, the roles began to shift: Lisa became photographer and model, set dresser and director all at once. And Marilène too extended her role and began to appear in the images herself. In the process, they evolved into an artist duo, with the two women now on an equal footing. Memymom’s photographs are sensitive images with strong references to theatre and film. Past and present blend in pictures that continue to refer to childhood, but in which youthful innocence has given way to sensuality.
This autumn, memymom will feature in a solo exhibition at the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, which will show both old photographs (from the family archive) and more recent work (22 September 2018–20 January 2019).
CREDITS
Production: Le Musée de la Phototgraphie à Charleroi
Co-production: Vlaams Cultuurhuis ‘de Brakke Grond’
Concept & Curation: Xavier Canonne & memymom
Scenography: Le Musée de la Photographie
With the support of Nikon, Cadre2000 & Milo-Profi