Carved in Love — Kalfiefees 2025

Artist’s Statement: D J Wilson, LRPS

At Kalfiefees 2025, Petru Wessels brought to life the haunting and tender world of Die Vrou met 27 Kinders — a one-woman production that moves quietly between grief and imagination. Inspired by a true story, the narrative follows a childless couple whose sculptor husband carves a wooden baby for his wife each year. Twenty-seven children, fashioned by hand, become her living family.

This photograph captures more than a performance moment; it holds the fragile boundary between creation and belief. Though the children are carved from wood, to her they breathe, belong, and endure. When the husband dies and the museum claims his other works, the threat to remove her “children” becomes an existential loss — a second bereavement.

In framing this scene, I was drawn not only to the theatrical light, but to the emotional geometry: the stillness of the solitary figure, the suggestion of unseen presence, the quiet insistence of memory. The themes — childlessness, love, ageing, creativity, and dementia — unfold without sentimentality. Instead, they are rendered with dignity and hope, reminding us how art can become refuge.

In Fields & Footlights, I seek moments where performance reveals something deeply human. Here, under festival lights, theatre becomes both shield and confession — a story carved in wood, and carried in the heart.