(M)Other, 2022

(M)Other, 2022. Acrylic and ink on canvas, 600x800mm. Framed.
 
French psychoanalyst and artist Bracha Ettinger argues that people should learn to respect again. Respect starts with respect for the Other which she views as starting with respect for the mother.[1] In Ettinger’s notion of matrixial borderspace there is a subconscious continuity between life before birth and thereafter that has to do with the relationship between mother and child. It manifests in transsubjectivity and intergenerational transfer. 
 
I transmute Ettinger’s ideas through imagery of blood and arteries. There is a flesh-coloured ‘place’ in the landscape, almost like a house with a roof, that represents a place of belonging and security. Mother is home. The work comments on the relationship between mother and daughter in the sense of the daughter being born from the mother and inheriting physical and personality characteristics, yet she is Different.
 
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[1] Bracha L. Ettinger, 2010. (M)Other Re-spect: Maternal Subjectivity, the Ready-made mother-monster and The Ethics of Respecting. Studies in the Maternal 2(1, January).