As a designer I'm inspired by shapes and proportions. I love working with the idea of changing the point of view on daily objects and taking them out of their context. This way one can appreciate their aesthetics when it's disconnected from the function. That's why I decided to go for a well know icon and blow it up. 

The wäscheklammer is an inherently strong object. It has a spring that holds it together. But just like this English phrase "hold yourself togrther", a person may feel a dissonance between how they appear to people from the outside, compared to how they really feel. 
A person is sometimes seem to the outside world - bright, large and strong. But this person knows that it is all fake. This person is in the brink of losing grip and falling apart. The spring at it's core, like in my  wäscheklammer is actually fake. All that holds this person as one piece of loose rope that they created as the last defence mechanism before falling apart.