memymom

Memymom is the name used by the artists’ collective and mother-and-daughter team Marilène Coolens (1953) and Lisa De Boeck (1985) since 2004. The seeds of the project were planted in the 1990s, when the photographer Marilène Coolens was taking snapshots of her growing daughter and had her play out scenes from cartoons, fairy tales and TV shows, in the hope of stimulating little Lisa’s imagination. The result was an intimate family archive of analogue photographs, which memymom later collected under the title ‘The Umbilical Vein’. As the daughter grew up, however, the roles began to shift: Lisa became photographer and model, set dresser and director all at once. And Marilène too extended her role and began to appear in the images herself. In the process, they evolved into an artist duo, with the two women now on an equal footing. Memymom’s photographs are sensitive images with strong references to theatre and film. Past and present blend in pictures that continue to refer to childhood, but in which youthful innocence has given way to sensuality.