Excerpts from my dissertation 'Mother Dearest'
As an artist and a mother I have often been made to feel that the two defining roles in my life should be kept professionally separate; that motherhood is not a relevant or intellectual subject within society in general, and so not suitable for consideration as a subject in contemporary art. In this essay I will explore how motherhood can be expressed within contemporary art in a meaningful and erudite way. I also hope to gain a better understanding of my own creative identity, and how motherhood forms part of the context of my own practice
INTRODUCTIONThe Marginalisation of Motherhood
I have approached the discussion in this essay on motherhood and its representations within contemporary art, from the position of an artist who is also a mother; in doing so I have had to confront the question ‘what keeps those of us who are mothers ourselves from making the complexity, the challenge, and joy of our experience the full subject of our work?’ (McDermot,1995,196). When I have produced work which relates to my children I have often felt the need to defend or apologise for my subject matter. Why has maternity proven to be such a problematic subject, considering everybody has a biological mother and approximately two billion women are mothers? The term “motherhood”, when discussed within a theoretical context, is commonly placed among taboo subjects such as racism, religion and sexuality. Whilst women have introduced their bodies and biographies into their work there is still a lack of representations, and a serious and sustained discourse of maternity within contemporary art. As Robinson suggests, ‘The morality and politics of motherhood are still under-articulated, whether verbally or visually’(1990, 7).
Within our western cultural psyche the mother has developed three complex roles identified as that of the socially constructed, institutional role; the unconscious mother articulated through psychoanalysis; and the fictional mother promoted through fictional visual and literary culture (Kaplan,1992).
