La Pietà

A year ago, my sixteen-year-old son was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. I rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night and stayed by his side until morning. Holding his body in my arms, now grown and unfamiliar, I could no longer recognize the shape of the little child I once held close to me. Paralyzed by pain as I watched him suffer, I kept touching and caressing him, trying to rediscover in my memory the small body I had once known.
Throughout that long night, the image of Pietà constantly appeared in my mind: the abandoned body of Jesus, a son now grown, resting in the arms of a worried mother. A year later, I finally let go of that image, and this painting was born.
I chose to add pieces of fabric and antique lace, some belonging to my grandmother and others found in flea markets, as symbols of a collective memory — traces of women who, perhaps, also had to sit beside and care for their suffering children.