ONE OF YOUR ANCESTORS MADE CORSETS

Hannah Harkes’ solo exhibition
Print Room Café & Bar, The Storey, Lancaster
2nd – 10th of April 2025

‘One of your ancestors made corsets’ is an exhibition about holding a dual perspective; about knowing that we both know and don’t know each other. Each work in this show is a representation of a very specific grandmother and those grandmothers change with every person who looks at them. Names may come to mind, perhaps places, years of birth or death. Yet although they represent real individuals (we may even know some facts), these ghostly figures are as mysterious as can be. We know her maiden name and birthdate, here is where she married and there she was buried, but we never knew her on the beach, in 1938, laughing and flirting. What your Great Great Great Great Grandmother was crying for, as she clenched her young fist in anger. The sheer amount of personality contained within our ancestry is infinite. The good and bad days, the long and hot nights. This exhibition invites us to try the impossible: to momentarily hold her in our minds, a person as large and full, as joyous and heavy as ourselves.

Supported by The Cultural Endowment of Estonia