Event Photos by Tamina Hauser & Video Stills courtesy of individual artists
Catalina Bauer / Amelia Ibañez
Primeras Palabras (Proyecto Silabario) / First Words (Silabario Project)
“First part of the Silabario project, which consist in translating the letters of the alphabet into body movements to write short phrases and words with the body. The title and the idea of the project refer both to the process of transmission of language and reading, as well as the Matte syllabary, a traditional instrument of the Chilean and Latin American pedagogy in the teaching of literacy in primary education.
Performance: Writing of the first lessons of the Matte syllabary through body movements that are the equivalent of the letters of the alphabet: love - mother - give - map - potatoe. The bread is food. The blanket is made of wool. The ink stains.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Yennyferth Becerra
La piel que llevo / The skin I'm wearing
“The piece explores the relationship of the artist with her daughter and son from everyday experience and the links it generates, visualizing them through the skin: girl skin and boy skin as artist’s double skin, a common living space wherein the body and the relations are molded daily. The image of the hands of Becerra sewing the double skin made of tracing paper, scale model of the bodies of her daughter and son, demonstrates the responsibility in raising and exchanging emotions.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Michelle Browne
The Bearer
“Documentation of a live performance in which the artist, in a cocktail dress, high heels, and an “up-do” walks forcefully back and forth across the gallery space trying to balance raw eggs on her head, and failing.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Lenka Clayton
The distance I can be from my son
“Performance-based video series in which the artist measures the distance she can be from her one and a half year-old son. In each video Clayton stands behind a video camera and tripod, allowing her son to walk away from her until she cannot help but run after him for fear of safety.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Jess Dobkin
The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar
“Documentation of a research-based performance piece in which the artist offers human breast-milk donated by 6 new mothers for tasting at a “breast milk bar”. During the performance the artist takes the role of sommelier discussing the tasting notes of each different milk, while a documentary video of interviews with the donating mothers plays in the background.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Carolina Hernandez
Ejercicios para la resistencia / Exercises for endurance
“Through holes on the wall of the Museum, Hernández writes the word resistance using paper nibs, basic material used by the artist in her art classes to school children in Santiago. The piece relates the artistic operations that characterize the work by Hernández with her duties as teacher and mother, showing them as spaces of resistance in which, at the same time, is necessary to resist.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Alejandra Herrera
Historia de la Resistencia / History of Resistance
“Action-based durational performance, 8-10 pm, Thursday, June 26, 2014. For two hours Herrera Silva cycles through materials, pushing a stack of ceramic dishes with a broom until they break and sweeping them barefoot, holding a large bucket filled with water while wearing high heels, balancing two trays of glasses to the point of exhaustion; breaking a stack of dishes with her feet and sweeping up the shards; allowing red wine to pour from her mouth and down her shirt to reveal white-on-white embroidered text, now stained red.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Leena Kela
Bad, really, really bad
“The performance is set in an installation of white foam forms (reminiscent of an apartment building, a single-family house, a staircase, and a very large balloon that, when inflated recalls a giant womb pulsating in the sky). Kela works with each objet sequentially, slowly placing each over her head. At one point she performs with an operatic recording of text taken from online mommy-blogs about bad mothering. The performance ends with the artist blowing up a small red balloon, and letting it go.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Courtney Kessel
In balance with
“The performance begins with the artist’s daughter, Clevenger, sitting on one end of a seesaw and entertaining herself with a book. For 30 minutes Clevenger reads while Kessel methodically piles personal effects onto the other side of the seesaw, testing it with her own weight to see if the two – the artist and her daughter – are balanced, and adjusting the items as needed. When they reach perfect balance, mother and daughter stay motionless on the seesaw until her Clevenger declares the performance over.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Marni Kotak
The Birth of Baby X / Raising Baby X: Little Brother — Years 1&2
“Two video documentation pieces: the first of a performance in which the artist gives birth in a New York City gallery as an art event before the public, and the second of an ongoing daily practice performance in which the artist lives her daily life as mother as art, with all footage taken from the perspective of her son, who is wearing a small video camera.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Tanya Lukin Linklater
The the, part 5
“Video footage of the artist’s daughters in the woods and by the water, overdubbed with prose spoken by the artist reflecting on hopes, dreams, and fears surrounding the mother child relationship.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Irene Lusztig
Maternity Test
“Staged performance-based video in which eleven women are invited to audition to read a text composed from a series of anonymous mothering.com forum posts that narrate the intimate experience of traumatic c-section birth.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Hélène Matte
The Essence of Life / L’essence de la vie
“Over the course of 45 minutes Matte performs a set of actions against the backdrop of a large projection with the words: to be a good mother is sometimes to choose to not be a mother. These actions include feeding the audience Crème Brule, turning herself into a wind-up doll with a carnival coupon skirt, smearing blue paint down her legs like blood, and working with heavy logs, a gas can, and a series of propane torches and fire extinguishers.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Gina Miller
Family Tissues
“Video documenting and contextualizing a social-practice performance in which the artist defrosts and discusses her childrens’ placentas with them.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Jill Miller
Unsung Heroes
“Performance-based video in which Miller intercuts found footage from Go-Pro advertisements (featuring heroic masculine sporting activity) with footage taken by the artist while wearing a Go-Pro to record her daily life as mother.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Loreto Perez / Angélica Sánchez / Mariana Riquelme
Video: Las Moiras and ¿Me protege? / Protect Me?
“Based on previous proposals, and collective work between the artist, her mother and her daughter, also an artist, who enter into verbal and visual dialogue framed in a triple maternal relationship. The dialogue proposed unstructure notions of filial hierarchy, stating a cross between fundamental aspects of life, death, creation, birth, light, darkness, blindness, ritual, wisdom, knowledge and experience transfer, intimacy. Materially, it proposes displacements, thresholds, transfers and changes of state, generating a visual and auditory architecture through the recorded voices of its protagonists.
Based on Greek mythology, performance refers to the action of three artists, from three different generations, who devise a transitional destination in the flow stream. The Fates, three spinners women who have in their hands the destiny of men; one spinning and get the birth of a person, other weaves and guide the events of his/her life, the third, Atropos, cut the threads, define how long s/he will live: birth, destiny, time...”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Ángela Ramírez
Obra en proceso / Work in progress
“Procedural work of indefinite duration, it reflects the constant reflection Ramírez addresses on the conditions of production of the artists as women, mothers and professional artists. A red light, traditionally used as alarm warns us of the thinking condition of the author transforming her work in an evidence of the difficulty of separating the artistic practice of everyday life.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Gabriela Rivera
Cría cuervas / Raising cuervas
“From the known proverb “breeding crows, and they’ll eat your eyes”, Rivera explores the deep-rooted parameters of western upbringing, proposing the subversion of the traditional model on having accepted the possibility of being “devoured” by its own daughter. Unlike traditional images of motherhood, mother-grandmother-daughter relationship that Rivera shows relies on the abjection of materiality and relations no longer based on given patterns and dice molds but in the uprising against them, reflected in the challenging and threatening image of her daughter.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Senoritaugarte
Rizomas comunes / Rhizomes common
“Based on the experience of distance and closeness with her daughter, and the notion of rhizome (Deleuze), senoritaugarte makes a video in which explores territorial, disciplinary, political crosses, re-enacting abandonment and recovering states. The body, material and workspace of representation in the pieces by senoritaugarte, is presented mediated by the audiovisual recording, mutated from woman-body to mother-body, trying to “analyze how do artists transform the personal is political premise into the body is political, both in their political, aesthetic and visual production.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Victoria Singh
SON/ART — Kurtis the 7 Chakra Boy: 07/07/04—07/07/11
“Performance-based video that compiles documentation from a seven year LIFE/ART performance that the artist began in collaboration with Linda Montano (Another 21 years of Living Art) when her son was born, on July 7, 2004, and ended on July 7, 2011.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
Ximena Zomosa
Iluminaciones / Illuminations
“Three lamps hanging from the ceiling, covered with natural hair of the artist, her daughter, and white artificial hair. The hair, recurrent material in the work of Zomosa, refers to the mother-daughter relationship, this time incorporating her own mother; as a record of the passage of time, both from its growth and its cutting, as well as its transformation and ageing, refers also to the absent and present body of mothers and daughters.”
— from the New Maternalisms Chile catalogue
