OPINIONATED with Andriani Raouna
This is a series coordinated by Saman Mimohammadi Tehrani of insightful exhibition reviews from Sotheby’s Institute's MA Contemporary Art. The series, 'Opinionated’, engages with contemporary art debates and practices. Saman is a former event planner and part of the creative team for MADE IN BED. He currently resides in London, England.
The exhibition review below was written by Andriani Raouna.
Maternality — Richard Saltoun Gallery
10 January – 15 February 2020
“Maternality” is strictly a woman’s business and as a woman myself, I could not have missed it. The exhibition takes place at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London and it is a group show of twenty-two works by eleven female artists from Europe and the USA, covering the period between the 1970s until today.
Although the word “Maternality” cannot be found in the dictionary, one immediately associates it to “Maternity”; one of the most powerful words in terms of what it represents. On a second level, “Maternality” involves the words “material” and “matter” which, in relation to this particular exhibition, refer to the materiality of the female body and its reproductive characteristics, which of course do matter.
Catherine McCormack’s curation is a bold representation of the reproductive nature of the female body viewed from its physical as well as its intangible, psychological perspective. Through works in different mediums such as painting, installation, photography and video, the imperfect female figure, the strong but at the same time vulnerable body and the complexity of a woman’s psyche predominate the exhibition.
Aimee Gilmore’s “Milkscape” (2016), the first work you encounter once entering the gallery space, sets an ever liberating tone. It is a large fabric installation that hangs from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. The abstract shapes of different shades of white and beige are traces of the artist’s actual breast milk which, according to Gilmore, represent “a material manifestation of something that has travelled from inside of the body to the outside, making it a literal expression of internal states.” As opposed to its visual abstraction, the work is a factual representation of the intimate and privileged relationship that exclusively takes place between mother and child. Similarly with the “Milkscape”, another powerful work that breaks traditional clichés about “inappropriate” or even “unattractive” images of womanhood is presented in Judy Chicago’s “Red Flag” (1971) where the menstrual period is presented in a photographic-lithograph.
Judy Chicago’s “The crowning quilt” (1982) is a tapestry made of a violet satin and delicate golden stitches depicting an image of birth giving, with the female genitalia being the central part of the work. It is part of the artist’s large scale visionary series “Birth Project” which included eighty-four textiles from 1980-85. The abstract shape of the female body, the softness and slight shine of the fabric and the golden stitches give an ethnic character to the work and present the act of birth giving as a graceful, almost transient moment. Just like Chicago’s emblematic “Dinner Party” (1974), the “The crowning quilt” (as well as all the works in the Birth Project), has been produced in collaboration with needle workers under the artist’s direction. Through this work Chicago, once again, honours the women who have preserved the technique of embroidery and needling and by making these practices visible, she stimulates a more general interest in these types of work.
Contrary to Chicago’s celebratory representation of birth giving, Annagret Soltau disturbs the viewer with “On the birth table pregnant I” (1978) with a blatant depiction of a violent intervention on the female body as a result of the process of birth giving. This is a photographic work of the artist’s pregnant body where, thick black threads are stitched on the photograph at the areas of the belly, the genitalia and the higher parts of the thighs. It is worth noting that, Soltau challenges the notions of medium specificity, in creating a work that combines the elements of performance (the artist as the model), collage (threads stitched on the photograph) and photography. There is a contradicting or one could say, a supplementary dialogue on the idea of birth giving between Soltau’s work and Chicago’s “The crowning quilt” which is presented in close proximity within the gallery space; on the one hand it is a miraculous moment when a new life is brought to life and at the same time, a moment of physical pain and suffering.
Women have been honoured in most of the world’s religions, with the Virgin Mary, Shakti and Aisha being some of them. A sense of sacredness and mysticism captures the viewer’s attention in Robyn Leroy-Evans’s abstract installation “That which we can never know” (2019). An eye-catching luxurious blue velvet piece of fabric is pinned on the gallery wall on three points of different height and a pink lining discreetly appears from the inner side. Indeed, Leroy-Evans gives a contemporary representation of Piero della Francesca’s “The Nativity” (c. 1470) where the inseparable connection between the mother, the father and the child is presented in a poetic manner. The discreet pink lining, is a conceptual representation of a woman’s inner private feelings, whereas the prevailing blue velvet fabric represents the persona she chooses to publicly express, emphasising the duality of a woman’s psyche. In Leroy-Evans’s words “This duality has been at the core of my experience as a mother thus far - how I represent myself physically on the outside usually feels far removed from where I am emotionally, on the inside.”
In Kirsten Justesen’s “Circumstances” (1973), which consists of a series of five black and white photographic works, the six-month pregnant artist poses naked in her own studio next to her sculpted torso. The double nature of the woman as an artist and as a mother is emphasised, an issue that has historically been the subject of feminist art. Moving away from the conventions of the male gaze, the real body with all its signs of aging and imperfections is presented in a confident manner. In some of the pictures, Justesen confronts the viewer’s gaze with her face being painted in a clown-like way, which somehow dramatises and gives more power to the artist’s staring gaze.
In “Maternality” there is no effort to beautify the female nature; rather, authenticity and honesty of what it means to be a woman reign through all the works. The fifty-year time span of the works (from the 1970s until today) is a point of reflection on the fact that debates around feminism and the sexual politics of mothering have been a point of discussion for a long time and they still remain unresolved. However, one thing is for sure; through such a truthful representation of the female reproductive body and psyche, “Μaternality” vehemently rejects the phallocratic notion of what Simone de Beauvoir ironically called, the “second sex”.
Andriani Raouna
MADE IN BED Contributor