On Being Mother-Artist
When I first became a mother, I resisted the new identity placed upon me. That of ‘being’ mother, of only being mother, of everything I do now being related to my identity as mother. I struggled with the sense that artists who are also mothers are so often seen through the lens of the mother-artist and only through this lens, something which I felt was reductive and essentialist. I wanted to be seen, still, as a person that existed in the world as I had existed before, as someone who could engage with the world in a way that wasn’t (quite) so attached to my body (a privilege made easier by my whiteness and being non-disabled). As Leslie Kern notes in her book ‘Feminist City’, when she became pregnant “it made [her] see the city in new ways. The connection between embodiment and [her] experience of the city became much more visceral”. She could no longer blend in, be part of the crowd, partake in generalist ideas. She was watched, identified and identifiable by her biology.
Growing up, I understood art as being about ideas and concepts, dreams and philosophies. The few wom*n artists I did encounter in my studies didn’t have children and I can’t recall any work from pre-pregnancy about the lowly act of mothering. Work by and about pregnancy, birth and motherhood must have been so mundane that it wasn’t important, and when it was important then it was only to those people who have also carried, birthed or raised children. I am learning that this thought process is in itself a fragment of internalised patriarchy: the thought process that the experiences of wom*n and, even more so, mothers, does not make for artistically interesting subject matter; one or two artists making work about this experience is enough and any more becomes a trope. Many of the artists showing in acting balance[d] wrote artists’ statements which speak about how the pressures from society - how the self is contextualised by others and by internalised messages from elsewhere - impact on their mental health. They write about how the myths associated with motherhood, of the ideal mother being selfless, saintly, perfect and pure, push them unfairly to achieve an impossible balance.
When looking through the 30 chosen works for acting balance[d], I felt overwhelmed by the number of artists who spoke about mental health challenges, especially as they have been impacted and compounded by the pandemic. Many speak about striving to reclaim an identity outside of motherhood and to rewrite the myths of what motherhood is. Kasey Jones in her work Sports Illustrated Postpartum Cover compares her identity as an athlete with her identity as a mother, finding striking commonalities of the ‘mental game’ preparing for a sporting event and the mental preparation for labour. Kathryn Rodrigues asks What About My Dreams?, simultaneous searching for connection and separation in the peripheries of her own back garden - all while within eyesight of her family and neighbours. Fatema Abizar, whose piece 8:54 AM forms part of a larger body of work titled Amma/Mama 1440 which accounts for every minute of a twenty four hour period, was inspired by the words of artist Susan Miller, “A trip to hell, a trip to heaven and the death of the self for a new self.” Fatema reflects on her own relationship to her new identity as a mother, ‘mourn[ing] her [old self] passing and… looking to this new self with curiosity and excitement”.
‘Sports Illustrated Postpartum Cover’ by Kasey Jones
With time and with deeper interrogation into the work of mother-artists, I am allowing my own buried gut-belief to resurface; the belief that the work of mother-artists is important. There are many varied experiences, opinions, takes, perceptions, expressions, resistances, acceptances and ‘more-than’s’ within the multifaceted work of mother-artists and we need more than one or two artists to tell these stories. The works of mother-artists are not a trope. They are familiar, grounded and raw and yet, perhaps even consequentially, they are also philosophical, conceptual and full of dreams. Could we perhaps even see these works as a movement? What acting balance[d] shows us, is that mother-artists make works which ask the most necessary questions of what it means to be human. And what is more necessary than that?
acting balance[d]; Spilt Milk Members Show ‘21 is on view until 31st December.
Rebecca Livesey Wright is a a Glasgow-based queer community-focused creative practitioner, working in facilitation & coordination with a curatorial lens. They are driven by an approach of unearthing hidden narratives by putting into dialogue individual experiences & works. Rebecca is committed to working with communities to enhance social inclusion & social justice through the arts & culture. Inspired by their own experiences of single pregnancy and parenthood, they are currently developing a project which will bring artists and single parents together to explore the specific experiences of raising children and existing in the world as single parents.
You can find out more about Rebecca by following them on instagram @rebeccor_blimey and @thesingleparentsproject
