The Silent Threshold of Mother

Part 2 of 3 · Mother Earth Trilogy. Previously: Mother's Lament · Next: Mother, in the Remnants →

This series continues. After Mother's Lament — where Mother Earth still cries in silence — Tientus Sudarto, a Friend of DIAZ, brings the same figure to a quieter point through his second work, Mother's Threshold of Silence.

If in the previous work a fresh wound spread from the face to the neck, this time the cracks have reached the chest — the place that once flowed with life. Her body has now hardened and cracked like old bark, overgrown with dry branches that ensnare rather than support. Her hair covering her face is no longer adorned with flowers, but with bare branches; leaf after leaf of dried leaves falls around her. The flower crown that once bloomed golden has withered completely.

Tientus writes this shift as a moment when mother stops nursing — not by choice, but because the wound has nearly touched her own center. A boundary that has rarely been imagined to exist: that the giving which seems endless could also run out.

Here is the poem that accompanies this work:

Mother's Threshold of Silence

After that lament, mother no longer seeks ears.
Mother in silence.

Mother begins to stop nursing. She has given for too long,
opening her body as a source of life thought never to run dry.
Cracks now reach the chest, where life once flowed.
Not because she chose to stop, but because the wound nearly touches her center.
The flower that once bloomed slowly dries, crumbles and falls, replaced by dry branches that hold silence.

Mother Earth now stands at the threshold of silence as a marker of boundary, that not all giving is destined to flow endlessly.
When pain is normalized as progress, and exploitation accepted as duty, silence becomes the final language.
If today life feels dry and fragile, perhaps it is because we forgot, that even Mother has a limit to how much she can be hurt.

— Tientus Sudarto

If Mother's Lament is still a question posed outward — "Is it fair?" — then Mother's Threshold of Silence is its quietest answer: silence. Not a resigned silence, but silence as a boundary — a marker that something once thought limitless, turns out to have an end.

Work Specifications

• Media: Charcoal and coffee stain on A4 natural paper.
• Black color: charcoal from the remains of illegal logging wood, South Malang.
• Brown color: coffee stain.

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Mother Earth Trilogy

Three works by Tientus Sudarto read in sequence, from lament, to silence, to remnants:

1. Mother's Lament — a wound still seeking ears
2. Mother's Threshold of Silence — a wound that chooses silence (this part)
3. Mother, in the Remnants — a wound that leaves almost nothing left to be heard at all