4. Aching (2024) – Maud Haya-Baviera

2025. Steel, glazed porcelain and Mason Stains
10 x 24 x14 cm

In Maud Haya-Baviera’s Aching, two steel structures, alluding
to a construct reminiscent of incarceration, replace a plinth,
which would traditionally be associated with the display of
sculptural forms. These steel structures host but also separate
two ceramic hands frozen in an attempt to touch. Their delicate
and fragile presence is in direct contrast to the harshness of the
steel. They appear somehow arrested in a moment of peaceful
gesture, yet something is oozing from one of the hands and a red
thumb is a sore that the eye can’t ignore. This work emerged from
a close reading of Alice Mendel’s letters in which she expressed
her desperate need to leave a country where she felt trapped and
where she and her loved ones were deeply endangered. Her letters
are addressed to Gladys Reid, a British woman who with care and
kindness, redoubled her efforts to save the Mendel family.

The work speaks of a wound that never fully heals and from which
pain continues to seep through, but it also evokes a sense of longing,
of love and the desire for proximity.

With thanks to the Mendel family, whose collection inspired this
work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.