Load-bearing explores the entangled states of motherhood as an institution and the embodied sensibilities of birth and caregiving. Working within the visual language of femininity, domesticity and childhood, I question stereotypes of patriarchal motherhood and sanitized depictions of birth to open space for a more expansive phenomenological experience. Embracing the vulnerable messiness of reproduction, fantastical combinations juxtapose the primal process of birth and the consumerized spectacle of mothering.
This exhibition considers the post postpartum period; the reverberations of birth and the ongoing, cumulative depletion of attempts at caregiving. Hand dyed silk sculptures embody fleshy fragments— breasts, belly, cords, organs, skin— which morph with armatures to blur the internal and external boundaries of the body. Skeletons of playground equipment create giant abstracted bodies which are bent, upended, or toppled under the weight of domestic labors. Industrial, load-bearing hardware hangs precariously from fraying organza bows, making visible the weight and tenuous strain of caregiving.
The pressures of care find tangible form in the making process: Intense compression of silk creates a resist to the plant-based dyes, marking surface textures suggestive of wear, stretch marks, and wrinkles. The fleshy translucent tones are created through strong decoctions of plants used historically for fertility support, birth control, and abortifacients. This specificity of color-making highlights symbols of reproductive agency and a potential nutritive antidote to depletion.
This work comes from my personal experience of mothering two children but represents only one small piece of the wide and diverse experience of birthing and caregiving.