From the Berlin-based visual artist and art therapist Eva Gjaltema-Theden, we present a series of collage artworks titled ‘Metamorphosis.’
Gjaltema’s portfolio is an ode to transformation. She “combines various archival and photographic materials, removes them from their original context, and rearranges the images to unfold new meanings.”
The featured series focuses on a particular transformation that is exclusively a part of womanhood—the threshold of perimenopause. “The series reflects on identity, aging, and self-perception during a phase when many women begin to reconsider who they are and how they inhabit their bodies and lives,” the artist explains.
Womanhood and the challenges that it comes with is an innately organic experience. As such, approaching it from the perspective of biological shifts occurring in nature brings comfort and context necessary to understand it creatively and productively. Gjaltema translates this experience beautifully in her art pieces. “Layering transitional organic imagery—insects, butterflies, evolving life forms—with cutouts of women, the series visualizes the instability and generative potential of this phase. Each image stages transformation as both disruption and emergence,” she adds.
The moth and butterfly metaphors adopted by Gjaltema-Theden in her work are descriptive of leitmotifs that speak to us about frailty and transition. They are also elements that perhaps speak most deeply about ideas of searching, or more likely, self-discovery.
Incredibly short-lived, insects of the Lepidoptera order allude to ideas of ephemerality—a symbol for the harsh and absolute truth of the passage of time. The collages inspire just as much as they point at the ticking clock. It is a duality that bounces between rushing and temporal awareness, but one that encourages us to accept life’s reality with gentleness rather than sourness.
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
