Bodies of Work, a group show curated by Corinne Botz, considers maternal experiences, with works by contemporary artists Marina Berio, Patty Chang, Lenka Clayton, Jamie Diamond, Nona Faustine, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Cao Yu. The artworks are stylistically diverse and incorporate a range of approaches, exploring inter-related themes including the body, time, politics, love, attachment, and separation. Normative and coherent ideals of motherhood are challenged, and the maternal is considered as a vital political force.
There has been a surge of artworks, books, and articles about motherhood over the past few years. To paraphrase a recent Paris Review article by Lauren Elkin, motherhood is finally being taken seriously in wider arts and a canon of motherhood is beginning to take shape. The subject of motherhood is urgent in the current political climate where there is a need to guarantee women control over their bodies. Women have begun to speak more candidly about health issues and biological processes that have in the past been cloaked in secrecy. Recent news articles have revealed bias against pregnant women and mothers in the workplace, and in spring 2018 the United States stunned the world when it declined to back a seemingly uncontroversial resolution to support breastfeeding in underdeveloped countries. For much of art history the subject of mothers were represented by men. Earlier generations of female artists often chose a career over motherhood or steered clear of explicitly addressing motherhood in their work because it was dismissed.
In this exhibition, maternal experiences, both overtly and obliquely, are transmitted into works that challenge preconceptions about being a mother and artist, while acknowledging the continued lack of resources and obstacles. The artists in Bodies of Work contribute something new to representations of motherhood, and offer an opportunity to delve deeper into the multiplicities that shape us.
I am a young adult cancer survivor and recently had my first child. These life events have greatly impacted my creative practice. Confronting my own mortality at age 25 and then experiencing the fragility and strength of birth, I have become obsessed with tracking time- documenting the small, routine moments of my life and my child's life. I am interested in content and parts of life that loop and repeat. I find that abstracted, repeated marks communicate the passage of time and memory best in my work. I want to give the viewer intimate, personal moments that capture the both fleeting and endless seconds of being alive.
Created from the perspective of mother, Homeland Security is an ongoing body of work comprised of (often futile or absurd) survival and escape gear made by a mother to protect her family and loved ones from a threatening array of inevitable tragedies or disasters, from simple domestic accidents to acts of terrorism and environmental catastrophes. Fusing the artist's converging interest in survival preparedness and mundane domestic survival, this body of work continues to manifest as a response to the ever present fears of the mother/caregiver, who, influenced by media and the societal commodification of fear, desires to protect that which she most fears losing. Using language culled from Survival Preparedness Handbooks which often doubles as domestic survival mantras, the work explores the line between utmost gravity and the absurd, between our real and daily dangers, and the sense of humor necessary for our survival. All of the work in this series speaks to human fears of loss and mortality, as well as the ego attached to the implied ability to prevent such mortal guarantees.