The Half Century Mark Hotel at Sixty North

A Letter from Jean(ne) Baret, a French herbswoman and the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, to Her Son.

Although many aboard Baret’s ship kept diaries, no first person accounts of Jean/ne’s direct experiences have been found. These series of letters imagines her words as she might have written to her children had they survived her.

My dearest Moonbeam,

Tomorrow will be five years since I lost you.

I know. Lost isn’t right because I gave you

Up. Abandoned you for me. Our only way out. Do you see?

I mean when you close your eyes do you ever see me?

I mean, do you even see? Uneven see? Is there dusk?

Or dust? A dawn? A new day? My only way out is still

up. Still out. Spill out. To only you my son. My moon. My all.

And now I must rest. In order to conjure your reply in bubbles and babbles.

Love Maman

photograph: For Roberto Matta by Patricia Christakos, October 2023

My Jean/ne Baret, is an ongoing multidisciplinary project. I make photographs and videos using found images, paintings and floral designs that hold significance to Jeanne Baret’s life. I also am creating a series of fictive letters and collages between Jeanne and her two-three children who may have all predeceased her. Roberto Matta (Chilean, 1911–2002) was an important artist in the Surrealism movement. His oil painting, In the Center of the Water, Au Centre de L’eau, 1941 was the inspiration for this post. Baret’s time in Chilean Patagonia near the Magellan Straits was incredibly arduous. Yet I feel that Baret found strength in the work she did in Chile. For more photos in this series go to http://www.patriciachristakos.com.

Roberto Matta, In the Center of the Water, Au Centre de L’eau, 1941