Milieu

The purpose of this experimental endeavor is to attempt to understand and illustrate how fragile personal objects, such as doilies and photographs, can be used to communicate, preserve memories, and evoke visual narratives in interpersonal contexts. It aims to intertwine the female and male gaze by juxtaposing the woman’s doilies with photographs taken by her husband and grandson.

Ileana was a homemaker, she looked after the house and her family her entire life. In her spare time, she liked to crochet doilies ("milieuri" in Romanian, popularly known as "mileuri") with other friends. 

Ileana lived for 90 years. Among her personal belongings she left behind several doilies crafted by herself and a series of family photographs taken by her husband and grandson showing her at different ages, from the age of 21 until the age of 84.

Photographs and personal objects from the family collection owned by Mr. Cristian Bassa were used within the project.

The idea of a family photograph woven into a doily started from a project about the needlework practiced by Romanian women in the last century.

I chose nine portraits of Ileana that were taken along her lifetime at different ages. As she aged, I wove more of her photos into the doilies, believing that with age, she could be more readily recognised in her works.

The word "milieu" was included in the Dictionary of Romanian Language, Volume VI, under the letter M (1965-1968). The doily has an ornamental function, but it also protects objects in the domestic space.

The doily (eng.)/ milieu (ro.)/ napperon (fr.) has a long history that initially places it as a clothing accessory, which then migrates from the human body into the domestic space, on pieces of furniture. The doily acts as a membrane that rounds, delineates permeable boundaries, yet covers and reveals certain surfaces of a domestic space, like an extension of a female body.

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