For two months my daughter refused to bathe. What was once a non-issue now haunted us both, and we each had our coping mechanisms: she begging and wailing and writhing, I waiting her out, struggling to keep her little skull from dashing on the porcelain. My sanity always felt in peril, and I stared deep into the foggy glow of the tiled walls. I could never predict the transition from weeping into giggling, the point when her little person couldn’t pour all her focus onto fighting me. Distracted by the pleasure of warm water, she somehow forgot to keep crying, and I’d breathe to help my brain cool down.
These episodes became, for me, an example of the sheer pointless misery of many of the tasks of housewifing. Contrary to our culture’s deeply held belief that women’s biological need to nurture makes tending to her home a satisfaction, I find housework to be what it is: a chore. This includes many of the tasks involving my ofttimes delightful children. For me, last spring, the worst was the bath.
Tiana Traffas is currently creating a series titled Arcana Ma. Arcana meaning secrets or mysteries, Ma as in mother or motherhood: mysteries of motherhood. This ever unfolding body of work explores the taboos and experiences of motherhood through archetype, personal experience, mythology and symbolism from the ancient goddess cultures to modern-day mamas. It also includes work that views the other phases of womanhood, maiden to crone, and the life-death-rebirth cycle through the len of motherhood. Arcana Ma only exists because of her daughter's birth. The artist's initiation into motherhood cracked her wide open into a psychedelic and potent transformation, leaving her reborn on an emotional and spiritual level. The act of birth and the continuous trip of motherhood is the inspiration for this series.
In my new series, Mother Tongue, I am exploring the emotions associated with Motherhood. Pulling imagery from personal domestic spaces I am creating a multidimensional metaphor reflecting on the moments one has when mothering another human being. This series is a space in which I explore feelings of loss, weight, clumsiness and a joy that can only come from selflessness. Each painting in the series represents a consecutive moment in a timeline from conception to present day. They are about making new spaces where there is no room, facing death while creating life, losing yourself through transformation, they are about fear and the unknown. Mother Tongue is the journey of giving yourself entirely to another person.
My current body of work on paper and canvas uses volatile watercolor, studio remnants, lint, medical tape, hot glue and more to abstractly illustrate what so many women go through but are not encouraged to discuss; the double-standards placed on our sexuality, the immense mental and physical space that caregiving demands, as well as traumas related to sexual assault, pregnancy and childbirth. Through traditional (paint) and symbolic (staples) mixed media, I portray the sweetness of imaginary babies and mothers, along with the gore of tumors, bleeding and C-section scars.