Mother Tongue is an artist book from a year-and-a-half-long investigation within the Oceania Collection of the Linden-Museum Stuttgart. It probes the possibility of artistic fieldwork as a critical and creative methodology—one that not only engages with an ethnographic collection, but also interrogates its status, legacy, and future. 

The book is structured as a journal de bord—a travelogue or field journal—documenting the research as it unfolds. It is interwoven with archival materials, photographs, and reflections, forming an intimate narrative that allows the viewer/reader to witness the process. The journey is not just one of knowledge, but one of engagement with the unseen, the lost, and the silenced.

Mother Tongue stretches beyond the confines of the museum, bridging the colonial past with the present through the lens of a living language community. It connects to Unserdeutsch, a German-based Creole language and community from New Britain Island. In doing so, it fosters a form of cultural repatriation—not of objects, but of language and memory.

Mother Tongue personal exhibition & edition - 2023 - The Linden-Museum & Institut Français - Stuttgart, Germany.