Curtains
Twin Peaks: The Return. Season 3. Aired 2017. Dir. David Lynch.
Curtains anonymise us. Lace, jacquard, velvet. Stage curtains uphold a world of fantasy. For the performer, the curtain is the only thing that protects them from being stripped bare by the audience before stepping onstage. Curtains can create the illusion of space. One does not know what lies beyond until you lean back and find nothing.
On January 16, 2025, visionary filmmaker David Lynch died. Lynch was known for his surreal oeuvre which blended dreams and nightmares. In his films, characters seem to speak and act from another world. A world of trapped brutalised suburbias and a cauterized middle class. Lynch’s death gave me a feeling of churning dread. Suddenly his spirit haunted every small domestic object; dense eraser heads, hot black coffee and the curtains that hung limp and dusty around my living room. Six days after his death, I found him again, in the ‘Magritte’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). René Magritte was a surrealist artist who, like Lynch, brought the everyday into unfamiliar spaces, blurring the lines of reality. Between surrealist scenes of floating bodies in unending deserts, layered bowler hats and apples. There Lynch was; in red curtains.
Passing through a scrim of tulle scallops, entering the ‘Magritte’ exhibition was like walking into another world. As I pushed through the exhibition’s crowds into the belly of the show, the walls darkened. Concrete floor was replaced by soft black carpet. There, staring out at me, was Magritte’s Les Mémoires d’un Saint (The Memoirs of a Saint) (1960). In the centre of an intangible space, a ring of rich red curtains stood upright, drawn at the middle to reveal the sky. Les Mémoires d’un Saint reminded me of arguably the most recognisable image of David Lynch: the dreamscape ‘The Black Lodge’ from his 1990 series Twin Peaks. A room entirely wrapped in bright red curtains, with dizzying black and white chevron floors. What is hidden behind the curtains is unknown: an image representative of the tantalising mysteries of Lynch’s work. The similarities between Lynch’s ‘Black Lodge’ and Magritte’s painting are undeniable. However, the pieces prompt two different impressions. The curtains in Lynch’s film encompass the landscape, making it feel as if the world exists inside this space. In contrast, Les Mémoires d’un Saint showcases the existence of a world beyond the curtains, pushing the viewer to question the limits of our material experience.
René Magritte, Les Mémoires d'un Saint (The Memoirs of a Saint), 1960.
Seated in the cinema of the AGNSW on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) played. We sat in communion in the theatre, captured by the red curtains that lined the walls. Set in a sooty factoryscape, the film explores dream sequences prompted by the gas of a leaking radiator that takes the protagonist, Henry, away from his industrial world. Inky black scalloping envelops scenes of a deformed chanteuse who lures and enchants Henry. Although I was enchanted, the theatre grounded me in reality. I could step back into the Sydney sun and shed Lynch’s leering world. I could step beyond the theatre’s curtains.
I felt this same thrill at 6 years old, wrapped up in my grandmother’s curtains, breathing in thick dusty fabric, before staging a play. The thrill of falsehood, a safe lie, became accessible through the play. The curtain in Magritte and Lynch’s works acts as a protective barrier, the illusion of the dream that makes it safe to step into their transgressive worlds.
In January, around Lynch’s death, I made a set of curtains. It was a feverish Sydney summer. Sleeping fitfully, I became fixated on them. Creating curtains feels like a Sisyphean task, involving endless yards of floral fabric. Sewing by hand in your lap, the fabric pools and fills the world around you. Curtains disrupt; soften. Curtains create a stage on which we perform in our everyday lives. In the tragedy of Lynch’s death, I found a new thrill in the rediscovering of him. I found him in art, in the drapery around me. The nights I sewed those curtains, I would dream of them too. Red velvet, dense cartridge pleats that enfolded me. Perhaps in my dream, I should have pushed through them to find out what was on the other side.