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.
Seeing and acknowledging what we see has an ethical dimension. I use photography to
make things visible and to reveal experience or spaces that we might not otherwise have access to. A sustained focus on space, gender, and the body is central to my work with photography. Lactation rooms are everyday spaces that embody deeply felt subjective experiences of motherhood. Symbolically and materially, expressed milk is a substitute for the mother’s physical presence and emotional intimacy when separated from her child. Photographs in my series “Milk Factory,” offer insight into women’s personal experiences, the maternal body’s status in the workplace, and ideological contradictions inherent in modern parenthood and government policies. The photographs are named for the diverse professions of the pumping women. The solitary pumping rooms take on collective power through the accumulation of photographs.