Every Sunday, Grand Ma

In Every Sunday, Grand Ma (2022), Prouvost returned to the family history she fabricated herself. Her fictional grandfather first appeared in two films from 2010 and took further form in Wantee (2013), the work for which she won the Turner Prize. She introduced him as a conceptual artist who was a friend of Kurt Schwitters, and described how he tried to dig a tunnel from his home in England's Lake District to Africa, only to disappear forever into that tunnel.

His wife was an artist as well. She assumed control of his legacy, putting her own finishing touch on his works and later founding a museum in his honour, in the hope that he would one day return (see Maquette for Grand Dad's Visitor Center). At around the same time, Prouvost created Grandma's Dream (2013), which explores her fears and dreams. This established an inner life for the character. Later, the grandmother assumed the lead role in the family story, shifting the focus from forefather to foremother – which could also be called a shift from history to herstory.

In this film, she is the one who leaves, disappearing not under the ground (like grandfather), but into the sky. Every Sunday, the story tells us, she ascends in an aeroplane in order to jump out. Naked, the old woman tumbles from the sky, only to gain wings made of palm branches and be transformed into a human bird. She somersaults amid the clouds and floats weightlessly above a misty landscape, like a celestial being looking down at the world.

Prouvost’s voice whispers: ‘Feeling the clouds... off she flies, in a dance with the world’. A choir of children rejoices in her flight. What began as one individual’s escape from all earthly obligations becomes a hymn in praise of freedom and the right to go wherever you want. Grand Ma also embodies healing and restoration. She is old, nude and not idealised, and it is this body which serves as the emblem of freedom: a source of life, connected to water and growth, that can effortlessly transmute into something new.