ANA-MARIA MORAR

She is one and many:

Her, Other, Om, Hero, Home, More

The hand bears what can’t be measured—

the weight of presence,

the quiet way love makes us whole.

I made a crown of their hands.

These pages are a collaborative effort between my son Martin and me. I have been recording his spoken words since he was two and a half years old, and at four, as he begin to engage with writing, we transcribed his ideas onto paper. These are few pages of our book, titled “Artist Terrific’ by Martin Morar

Am open book that resists closing, its pages hold fragments and traces. Here, entropy becomes ritual. The work embodies the ‘necessary mess’ through which children grow, making sense of the world in their unending journey of learning and discovery.

I never know how the final form of my work will turn out. I begin with one idea, and then, as I go along, I uncover new insights. This piece evolved into a bouquet, marking a turning point in my work with fabric and plaster. It is the first in the series to incorporate color and to mimic the touch of ceramic. It’s like it knew, from the start, how to bloom.

To grow in,

To grow out,

To grow with,

To fly…

Letting go and reaching for.

‘Close to the body’ stands as a metaphor for the formative period every child undergoes: to grow in understanding oneself, to grow out into the world around them, to grow with others in relationships, and ultimately, to fly towards their unique selves.

Paper was my first love. Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting blank pages from used books; my quest to find paper with unwritten history, of unique size, shape, texture, age and color is always a real adventure.
A blank page is not empty. It carries a certain energy that initiates dialog, it calls forth a response… and once I start working, it reveals itself completely. At times magic happens but there are also instances when the paper refuses to answer. No matter the context, the result is always unique and it leads on to the next search, to a novel encounter.

With ‘giving the past a second chance’ I am 4 ½, I am 8, I am 7, I am 45, I am 62, I am 82, I am 3 months, I am…

The nail takes me back to my childhood years, when it was part of my play. With my grandfather, I would straighten them with a hammer and reuse them for a new purpose.

Around the world, back to the place I started from.

Every day, a drop of breastmilk on paper (life on paper)

The milk book originated in my desire to give meaning to the journey of breastfeeding, a one year crossing. It became a book of nurture, an extension of the umbilical cord. The milk-sodden paper testifies to the daily encounters, the daily struggle and joy, to the half seen.

The project references all that’s involved in nurturing a child, work that we do over and over again, and which seems to erase itself.

When my son started talking, I recorded his first words in a journal. He was mixing languages and making up his own, not fully understood by anyone except me, his mother.
And so I realized I am ‘home’ for him, a space and place where he is understood, accepted and loved unconditionally.
Home is not only a place we depart from and return to but a longing we carry within ourselves.

‘one, seeming to be a traveler, came to me and said, ‘what is the shortest journey from one place to the same place?’

‘surely’, i said, ‘to stand still.’

‘that is no journey at all, he replied. the shortest journey from one place to the same place is round the world.’ and he was gone.

G. K. Chesterton

i am here, i am here, i am here

Motherhood is a rhythm without pause. Nurturing does not end after nine months, or first year, or even the first seven - it lasts a lifetime. The enlarges ‘breasts’ symbolize this unending care: beautiful, demanding, and a reminder of the inexhaustible resources a mother offers.

The work is a reflection on play. In a child’s play there is connection, discovery and surprise. It is a place of intense sensory engagement, that allows for tasting more, feeling more, experiencing more.

The piece desires to be a mirror that reflects a child’s way of playing. The socks are a mosaic of possibilities: anything can turn into play. Resources are endless. One can step in them again and continue the play, recomposing the game over and over again, never in the same way.

This work explores how the thread of the voice looks like, how meaning and attention are assigned to sounds.

“mAma” “maaaaama” “MAMA” “maMA” …. When my son calls me I hear him calling me as (a) mother, woman, brother, friend… I also hear myself calling my own mother. In this preverbal stage lies the beginning of who we are, who we ought to be, in this relationship, at this stage, so unaware.

This is the first work in a larger series that will unfold over the coming years, combining my children’s outgrown cloths with plaster. Fabric holds the intimacy of touch and the weight of personal history, while plaster offers solidity and timelessness. Together, they explore the balance between permanence and impermanence, strength and fragility, the ordinary and the profound.

This work is constructed from the cloths my son outgrew during the first year -a journey marked not only by visible milestones but also by the subtle, often unseen steps that quietly shapes us.

As the sculpture ascends, it mirrors the way our perspective evolves with growth. Step by step, what we see and how we see transforms.

What did we want to hold

in place—what did we think

could stay?

Childhood moves like breath…

Maybe presence

is the only thing

we ever really had.

I’ve been asked, many times after I had my son, about how I felt. “I feel like a cup that spills over, full and empty at the same time”, I would say.

I chose the bib as a symbol for this state of being. It is a familiar object that surrounds a baby’s universe during the first months of his life. In this work, the bib is a reminder that the experience of feeling overwhelmed is something worth embracing. The average everyday experience is something we easily forget, but the extreme moments stay with us.

I cut and gathered my son’s nails in his first year of life. Tiny elements collected in a jar, a symbol of time, almost unnoticed.

Early on, as a parent, I realized the value and importance of our daily, repetitive, and trivial actions. ‘Units of time’ is an attempt to bring meaning to these gestures and embrace all efforts as vital for a newborn’s growth. Without them there would be no growth.

The ordinary experienced for the first time.

I wrote the word ‘giving’ over and over again on a piece of paper, over the course of several days. It reflects a state of being that transforms and vanishes.

In the complex relationship between a parent and child, the parent is the life source and giving fountain. The dependent being takes everything, to the point of absorbing the parent’s self.

But when a child reaches milestones the parent realizes that the ‘I’ exists in giving. It also disappears in giving, both at the same time.