my mothers coat, film, 5:51 min, 2023. I started my journey to transform an inherited object long ago. I knew I had material and was delighted to find an opportunity to work with it through the 'at a loss' project. I had different potential starting points: the tissues I kept after my first miscarriage, my mothers toiletries bag with a handful of lipsticks - all in the same shade of red, my grandmother's handbag with the broken clasp, my two urns with my cat's ashes along with fur clippings and the unlikely journey with my mothers politically incorrect fur coat which became the gateway to catharsis and a new journey. I have found a way to wear the coat without wearing it In return it returned me to nature whilst it had me convinced that it was me who was returning it to nature. As my project was developing I kept thinking about my mothers old fur coat. I discussed the potential with the 'at a loss' discussion group. The coat was beckoning me from the closet. Beckoning for air and light and distance to the moths I feared had infested the closet. The moths were everywhere in the flat, everywhere in the whole building, in the toaster, the flour, the woollens, in some old books, between plates and in the plaster of some walls. The coat was beckoning me, and I responded. How could I incorporate the coat within my practice? I work with a colour dogmatisme, red, shades of white, occasionally a sprinkling of gold and recently baby pink. How to fit in a black coat other than drawing it in red. Why not just go utilise another object instead? My mother had an unfulfilled wish to be buried in a forest. There are rules and regulations in Germany, so that didn't happen. She got buried like a proper German citizen in a regular local cemetery. I kept looking at the coat, it was now hinging in my studio. A blob of black in a sea of different shades of white and red. I drew the coat and came to the conviction that if I wanted to use the coat I had to return the coat to nature. The filmed or photographed return to nature would be one of my contributions to the exhibition. I decided to bury my mothers coat. I would return the coat to nature, the forest, and bury it there instead of my mother. I had a plan to travel to the German forests of my youth, the ones my mother knew and loved best. It's those forests she spoke of when she spoke of getting buried in the woods. But somehow the timing wasn't right, the funds didn't exist for the journey, the practicalities remained unclear in my head and the idea was paused. I kept returning to the wish of burying the coat. But there was still my colour dogmatisme. None of my ideas around nature and my mothers coat fitted into my usual way of working. And there was something else. My dread. My dread of being alone in the forest. I could of course ask someone to join me, to do the filming, it would feel safer and it would be practical, but it wouldn't be right. The connection to the environment would be watered down, the dialogue between nature, the coat and me shallow. I knew I had to do this on my own. I grew up around the forests of the Grimm brothers along with their stories. Dread of the dark forests was just beneath the surface. Fine for a Sunday walk with family, but instantly menacing if I fell behind. There was always a fear of getting lost, of ending in having to stay the night amongst the roots and branches. But the idea had already been rooted in me. So when I was visiting friends in a Swedish cabin, I thought, that's it! I will bury the coat in Sweden. The cabin is in the middle of a forest and it would be dumb to not use this opportunity. So, after Sunday lunch off I went, in my white summer dress, the weighty coat in a cloth bag, announcing with great bravur my intention and went in search for the right location for coat burial. It didn't take long for dread to join me, but I pressed on. It was a hot summer day in bright daylight, at a time of year when in Sweden it barely got dark even at night. All kinds of irritating biting insects joined and it seemed like the world's insects decided to join my quest, relentlessly biting, buzzing, whining around me. A tornado of insects carrying me into the forest. A different forest of dread. The wrong forest. A forest so full of roots, rocks, poetic moss and a tight network of hostile, scratchy blueberry bushes impossible to dig into with my bare hands and white summer dress. So I took a quick decision to give the coat a shallow, shallow grave, a temporary covering under moss. And as I took a tiny hesitant step off the path I was already overcome with dread and bad balance and decided to quickly wrap the coat in a sheath like cloth and cover the package with moss just here. One step into the forest from the path. There was buzzing and biting everywhere, things falling out of the moss and crawling over my hands, my ankles were tingling and I couldn't hold my balance on the rooted, rocky surface. I covered the coat a bit, took some photos, grabbed the wrapped coat again and hurried back to the others. I was gone for around 30 minutes. This admittedly enchanted looking nordic summer forest was all wrong for this. I was longing for a kind of forest with the soft ground cover of leaves as found in Central Europe. A forest less wild, less magical, more managed, less menacing. My quest to return the coat to nature failed pathetically. I failed but realised that I don't really want to bury the coat. I wanted to lovingly return it to nature, let if feel nature without protecting it in a cover. I wanted to echo my performance 'Tschüss Mama! ich hab' Dich lieb'. I wanted to open, close, fold, touch. I wanted to care. I took the coat to the forest just outside Copenhagen. I went to a part of the forest I knew quite well. I have held workshops here for women who escaped violent relationships. I had a date with my mother's fur coat, just the coat, me, my phone and a little tripod, spending a couple of hours around a small lake and just interacted with the coat. This forest was right. Less wild or maybe just more familiar, more urban. At least this forest felt only mildly filled with dread. But, of course, by now the coat had transformed. It has finally become mine. I have longed for it whilst a child, denied wearing it as a young adult, nevertheless took it after my mothers passing, kept it in a moth filled dusty cupboard, failed to bury it in Sweden, dragged it around Copenhagen, accidentally ripped a fastening whilst hanging it from a grumpy, gnarly tree. And thus it slowly transformed. My mothers coat that used to be my mothers mothers coat and before that my mothers mothers mothers coat became mine. With a memory of my mothers hands folding seemingly endless laundry I was kneeling on the moss repeatedly folding, unfolding, putting down and refolding whilst people stared across the lake at me, dogs passing, I entered a different realm. There was a kind of quiet catharsis born of carefully feeling the fabric, the fur so reminiscent of my beloved cats, who now are just ashes in their urns. Feeling, stroking, folding, lifting and putting down, folding, stroking, feeling. By the time I got home and began editing the footage it became slowly apparent that it was my coat now. A connection to the women of my mother's side of the family. I now realised my mother was already returned to nature all along, maybe not in a forest like she talked about, but she is in the soil of a cemetery full of old trees in a grave lovingly cared for by my father. I guess it was always more about my reluctance to grieve for my mother, after all it was and still is my father's all engulfing grief. So now might be the time for the journey to the German forests with the coat, dread and history in tow. I will continue that dialogue with nature together with my fur coat in the places connected to my mother, my mothers mother and my mothers mothers mother. It turns out the forest is, in spite of my fear, also in me and the cancelled fur coat keeps insisting its return to nature and becoming a guide to the forest for me.