• Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Bea Borgers

  • Mémé - Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO

    © Sarah Vanhee

Mémé

Sarah Vanhee / CAMPO



 

Mémé is a solo performance by Sarah Vanhee, with guest appearances by puppets, ghosts and a child. An intergenerational, multi-layered and plurilingual work about the relationship to the ancestors, to the (native) soil and to the female body, starring the spirits of Vanhee's West Flemish grandmothers who – like many women of that time – spent most of their lives ‘laboring’, in the two senses of the word: bearing and raising children; and working in the home and ‘on the land’ – always in service of others.

How does today’s world relate to those forgotten women of the past, and to the earth they cultivated? And how do we see them reflected in the forgotten women of today, whose labor and labor are still being exploited?  

It is an ode to those ‘invisibilized’ women, to the earth, to life itself, both emotional and intellectual, to work and pleasure. Mémé is a ritual attempt by Vanhee to bring her grandmothers back to life, re-connect, repair, and then – differently – say goodbye again, in a time without boundaries.  

 

Mémé premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels.

 

In Dutch, West Flemish & English, with Dutch & English subtitles
+- 90 minutes

press

Mémé connects with ancestors across decades and generations. In this ode to their strength and to their existence, Vanhee gives the grandmothers the attention and love they had to lack during their lives.

NRC - Ron Rijghard - ****,

Vanhee takes on the role of a mediumistic storyteller linking the past and the present through suggestive, fetish-like materiality and playful, home-made rituals of repossession.

i.c.a.p. - Francesco Chiaro and Danja Burchard,

The performance gradually expands into pure, benevolent emotion, with a touch of good-natured humour.

JEU - Mario Cloutier,

Mémé is personal, tender and funny and has an almost cathartic ending.

e-tcetera - Daphne de Roo ,

Mémé is a rich reflection that will be recognisable to many families.

De Standaard - Charlotte De Somviele - ***,

Mémé' is a heartfelt ode to Sarah Vanhee's late grandmothers.

pzazz - Jasper Delva,

The piece is an ode, a thank-you to my grandmothers

VRT Radio 1 - Culture Club - Bent van Looy,

the comeback of the grandmothers

falter.at - Sara Schausberger,

Mémé is a celebration of our lives being intimately connected to the land from which we come. I come from a family where a sense of work and duty is central; even the name of my maternal grandmother’s village, Werken, means ‘work’.

A conversation with Sarah Vanhee - Myriam Stéphanie Perraton Lambert ,

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