I suppose, it’s not called Fairyland for nothing. As we went ahead with the exhibition planning, I learned that there was a story behind the brown wood frames we borrowed from the Jersey Museum & Art Gallery to construct my grid. I was told those frames have had previous lives. In one of the incarnations they travelled to the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012 and to Jeu de Paume in Paris a year before where they contained the original work of Claude Cahun. She lived and died here in Jersey. That is why Jersey Museum & Art Gallery owns a considerable archive of Claude Cahun’s work and was a major participant in that exhibition.

So, we knew we could count on those frames but we didn’t know how many of them actually existed. When the plan of my grid was ready we went to the museum to check out those frames. I needed 39. When Gareth and I met Val who took us to the museum storage, she told us there were 39 frames she could lend us. The exact number I needed.

What does it all mean? Well, it means we got lucky. It also means that it’s not the first time I’ve seen those frames. I saw Claude Cahun’s exhibition in Paris in 2011. It was an eye opener for me. My admiration of Claude Cahun’s courage and fearlessness dates from that very exhibition. So, if courage and fearlessness were a fairy dust, I should probably make sure I rub myself against those frames thoroughly before we return them.

Photo credit: Entre Nous exhibition view at The Art Institute of Chicago by isa maisa