Megan Wynne
Title
Megan Wynne
Medium
Location
Norfolk
Virginia
Artist Statement
My recent work focuses on the subject of myself and my daughters to speak about the intensity, intimacy, and interdependence of motherhood. Playing with the persona of the mother and the mother-as-artist, the work brings up uncomfortable questions about identity, autonomy, and childrearing.
The images are at once familiar and unfamiliar, inviting and repelling. The work often straddles the line between referencing the family snapshot and cold clinical documentation. There is also ambiguity in how the individuals in the scene are emotionally and physically relating to each other. This uncertainty helps to create a sense of surreality in the work, and dark humor and melodrama within the narrative further push this aspect of the imagery. I use these devices to reflect on the deeply mysterious, contradictory, and often unknowable psychological undercurrent beneath everyday experiences of interconnection.
The mother-child relationship is the most primary and foundational relationship in one's life. In addition, there is a deep transgenerational legacy of the mother-child dynamic, in which beliefs, behaviors, and past traumas haunt one generation to the next. In my work I explore my maternal inheritance, as I address the intensity and profound complexity of the bond I have with my children. These depictions of the maternal experience challenge dominant reductive and over-sentimentalized representations of motherhood, as well as idealized and over-simplified perspectives on childhood.
The images are at once familiar and unfamiliar, inviting and repelling. The work often straddles the line between referencing the family snapshot and cold clinical documentation. There is also ambiguity in how the individuals in the scene are emotionally and physically relating to each other. This uncertainty helps to create a sense of surreality in the work, and dark humor and melodrama within the narrative further push this aspect of the imagery. I use these devices to reflect on the deeply mysterious, contradictory, and often unknowable psychological undercurrent beneath everyday experiences of interconnection.
The mother-child relationship is the most primary and foundational relationship in one's life. In addition, there is a deep transgenerational legacy of the mother-child dynamic, in which beliefs, behaviors, and past traumas haunt one generation to the next. In my work I explore my maternal inheritance, as I address the intensity and profound complexity of the bond I have with my children. These depictions of the maternal experience challenge dominant reductive and over-sentimentalized representations of motherhood, as well as idealized and over-simplified perspectives on childhood.
Topic
Collection
Citation
“Megan Wynne,” Artist Parent Index , accessed April 19, 2024, https://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/2.
Item Relations
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