I grew up in this area where wine is a — it’s a wine area. It’s Palatino, and so barrels are something that you see there quite often, but more connected to — like when they do their wine celebration. ((Fatalistic Logic)) So, it’s more like a nostalgic thing. Today, they do this in steel tanks. So, the old type of wood barrels is going more and more away. And in my work, a very — I’d say a strong link is always through old techniques that are more and more disappearing, like handicrafts. And doing a wood barrel is a job by itself to do this form, and very interesting on this form of a barrel, in itself, as a container.

And the idea then that I developed is that I used this barrel as something between a suitcase and a cabinet. So, like — it’s an inner space, and it is like open a closet, and then you see this — and then this coat is a Persian fur coat. And also, there is a link to my mother as well, because it’s her Persian fur coat. And her Persian fur coat, as well as her mother’s, were in my cabinet for many, many years. Because it was in a certain period — I don’t know if it was all over the world, but in Germany it was a symbol for a certain class of people owning a Persian.

And so, they kept these Persians, even if it was out of fashion to give it to their children, and to keep it as something with a value. But also, it gives a smell of a certain time from the ’50s and ’60s, maybe earlier as well. And so, I took this black Persian, put it on this hanger, and the hand and feet that come out are cast from my mother’s hand and feet in wood.