Maia Pavey

A collection of separately dark, humorous, and tentative stories told to me by my mother of her childhood home ignited my fascination to tackle the seemingly unconnected events and combine them into coherent body of work that connected the dots. My initial experience of the house is at a great distance from what it is now.

During the German Occupation of Northern France in the Second World War – the house that my Grandparents moved into 20 years later – was inhabited by the Nazis and used as an infirmary. When my Grandfather and his family moved in, he became the village doctor and used the two rooms on the bottom floor in the front of the house as his surgery and waiting room. Later, the Hollywood actor Yul Brynner bought his first home a thirty-minute walk away and stepped foot into the house as a patient of my Grandfather’s. Now, the house has little remnants of these events – a space of everyday convenience for my Grandparents with a plethora of family memories surrounding them.

There are layers upon layers of patterned wallpaper, providing a backdrop for the proudly placed objects in the many rooms and especially with the dark prior knowledge, there seems to be an illusion of the home. Using accounts described by my mother, I find evidence of a past almost lost and unrelated to the present time inside this building.

In 1966, Yul Brynner features in Triple Cross as Baron Von Grunen, a Nazi Colonel who is shot dead as a traitor at the end of the film. In 1973, my Mother (who was fourteen at the time) answers the door to Yul Brynner and she says, “I suppose you are here to see my Father”. He steps into the hallway onto the swastika tiles.