2017

The Mother Drawings are a series of works that respond to the idea of being concurrently a mother and an artist, and unfold over a year-long cycle (2016-2017). In a male-driven world and profession, the #motherartist not only ought to face her condition as a woman living in a patriarchal system but also her status as a mother. As #motherartists, women struggle to sustain their work as they cope with the demands of a young child. Although the subject might appear as an overused pseudo-feminist art world cliché, an artist must go through the process of motherhood in order to truly understand the immense challenge it represents for an art practice.

In this performative gesture of drawing while coping with maternity, I care for my drawings as children: I carry my drawings everywhere, just like a mother is aware of her child every day. The drawings represent a failed attempt at making a drawing, just as motherhood is a failed attempt at motherhood itself. The drawings live with me, I repurpose them as shower sponges, kitchen towels, bibs, place mats, as impermanent decorative objects, floor mats, umbrellas, napkins, notebooks, as a canvas for my child, etc. They inhabit my domestic space and get lost inside my purse in the midst of baby wipes and pacifiers. My brain oscillates from concrete to abstraction in a matter of seconds. Both my child and the drawings act as parasites to my body; one out of love, the others out of my obsession to pursue an art practice. Most of the drawings act as containers for the harsh judgment I hold against myself as a mother, a woman and an artist. They have also embraced compelling readings on other mothers and feminists such as Alice Walker, Virginia Woolf, Maggie Nelson, Susan Sontag, Rebecca Solnit, amongst others.

Materials: graphite, polaroid, watercolor, saliva, burned paper, tea, coffee, pee, ketchup, vinegar, salt, bird’s poo, marker, purple maze, aubergine, beetroot, rain, months outside, dirt, feet, colored pencils, crayon, acrylic paint, adhesive, tape, mezcal, honey on acid free cotton paper.