ALICE

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a many-layered parody of Victorian Britain. It can also be taken as a story from the viewpoint of a girl growing up, with the central motifs being the changes in her perception of her body and criticism of customs, kindness and the normal order of things. In Carroll’s novel, the confusion caused in Alice by physical changes is made tangible by the dramatic effects of the food and drink she has. ”I wonder if I've changed in the night?” This is the beginning of her famous adventures, and I have used their basic material – food, drink and the power of the imagination and language – in my interpretation.

My work consists of a dinner table set with food items I have gathered from beaches and five natural-size charcoal drawings of a girl at different ages. The drawings are based on the photographs Lewis Carroll took of Alice Liddell when she was 4–12 years old. I have taken only the features of her face and developed a posture to fit her expression. The 'foods' collected from Helsinki’s beaches in the summer of 1993 replicate childhood games in the sandbox. Their playful names also are an important element of the setting.

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