Bara Palcik

Title

Bara Palcik

Website

Medium

Location

Dublin
Ireland

Artist Statement

Bara would like other parents to identify with the impact that children can have on their lives or offer would-be parents a unique insight into an experience of first-time parenting. Her work is also a love letter of sorts to her main inspiration, her son, as the work she creates is not only about him but for him.
The short film “Matyas” is inspired by a Czech fairy tale “Otesanek” written by Karel Jaromir Erben. The Czech folk tale from the nineteenth century talks about a living, constantly hungry, wooden log which eats its mother and its father and then continues eating other people. The end of this enormous eating is brought about by an old lady working in the fields who cuts through its wooden stomach and all the people jump out alive.
“Matyas”, the story of the all-consuming nature of maternal love, talks about a single mother who is not unhappy but very tired. The mother struggles with her constantly hungry baby who, in an addition to the original folk tale, never sleeps.
The mother grows desperate as she tries to feed the baby with everything she can find in their home. Her milk is not enough, nor is porridge, fruit or vegetables. She gives him pork and chicken meat but nothing helps. Nothing she can find fills the baby, and he constantly cries and doesn’t sleep. Finally, after over 300 sleepless nights, the mother finds a solution to this constantly growing hunger. She takes a long shower and prepares herself: she shaves her legs and armpits, she washes her hair, she brushes her teeth, all so she can be clean and ready for her baby. She has, once and for all, realised how to fulfil her baby’s insatiable hunger.

Exhibitions

“Matyas” was selected for the Dublin Feminist Film Festival 2018, Desert Edge Global Film Festival in India 2018 and Mother Art Prize in London 2019.

Collection

Citation

“Bara Palcik,” Artist Parent Index , accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/396.

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