Memymom

memymom is a collaboration between two artists, a mother (Marilène Coolens, 1953) and her daughter (Lisa De Boeck, 1985). Two self-taught photographers who work and live in Brussels, Belgium. The cross-generational project began with what the pair describes as The Umbilical Vein, a reference to the analogue image made between 1990 and 2003. An intimate archive of family photos in which Marilène encouraged Lisa to express herself and to invent her own improvised theatre sketches. Over the years, these semi-staged dreamscape portraits developed into a mature conversation that deals not only with metamorphosis, personal identity, potential, and the mother-daughter relationship, but has evolved into a plea for sensual analysis and tragic romanticism. It reveals both the foundations of the close bond and the professional career of this artistic duo, who have worked together under the moniker memymom since 2004. The rough analogue images of a past era also form a source of inspiration for the artists’ current work, which produces an emotional aesthetics that stops just short of the erotic; inventing mystery, exercising intimacy, and creating a post-modern, hyperlinked narrative where anything might unfold. The mother-daughter relationship means they can often work in a highly intuitive manner that allows for the results to emerge naturally and almost automatically.