In this publication, Christi Wijnen takes us on a personal journey through what she now sees as her rite of passage into adulthood.
At the age of 21, she leaves for Curaçao. The year is 1987, she just married her Antillean husband, a life into the unknown; only to return to Holland 3.5 years later, after what feels like an Endless Summer, a divorced mother with a broken heart. In 1993, feeling very homesick, she returns to Curaçao one more time for a holiday with her daughter. After returning to the Netherlands, she decides to never go back again.
Now, with her current partner, she travels back to Curaçao 23 years later where she experiences an unexpected feeling of homecoming.
A few years later she meets ‘the other woman’, the person who also had a relationship with her ex-husband before, during and after her marriage. The woman who also became a mother in 1988. The matrifocal system in Curaçao is what ties both women – you don’t necessarily need a man to raise your child.
Through her photography, old and new photos combined and fragments from the letters to her mother, she found more answers, so that the story can be shared.
The sewn-bound publication comes in a die-cut cover and is trilingual: Dutch, Papiamento and English. You can order a copy via Christi Wijnen.
