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How this project started:

   

"For more than fifteen years, the need to unveil the work of Poucette Fauconier, in this case my paternal grandmother, has been with me. Not only the work but also its great personality. Fifteen years as paintings, gouaches , drawings, press articles, catalogs and an abundant correspondence wait patiently for the day when I will tackle the task.

Stuck in a two-room apartment in Buenos Aires with no possibility of travel during the first Lock down of our current health crisis, the evidence that the moment was right came over me. This space-time break could turn into an opportunity.

As the work, since Poucette's death in 2004, was physically at my sister's in Breda, we started a ping pong exchange of information overseas. Anju took out the napkins with drawings from the drawers, the tables from the chests (those which in this case did not find their place on our walls, for lack of space), the press articles from the binders and the correspondence from the boxes. She took pictures of it which she sent to me in bulk. I peeled and categorized press articles, recreated a timeline, looked for provisional titles on tables and digitized everything on a web page.

When it was possible for me to travel to Breda, I began to sort and then read his correspondence. We knew of her existence before her death, she had openly informed us of it; it was for us, she bequeathed it to us. There was a need to know who she had been and in this perspective, some of her letters were provided with annotations that she added later for our better understanding. She had made small packages, by author and situation, bound with a paper ribbon, like cupcakes.

So, while the attention of a part of the world was grabbed by the Netflix television series, I let myself be absorbed by the fascinating chapters of her hectic life, through the gaze and the writing of the different characters who were part of it. .

She made it easier for me to keep the drafts of the letters she sent to her interlocutors.

In the hope that social and cultural activities can soon resume their course and a formal retrospective exhibition can emerge, I am happy to be able to virtually share his work, his career and a few snippets of his life. "

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Author's Note

Maïka Eggericx