Matrescence and Performance

An exploration of what performance can do to expand conventional representations of becoming a mother. Maternal bodies and processes of pregnancy, childbirth and sustenance have historically been depicted in art and literature as variously uncanny, abject, grotesque, monstrous, and hybrid. Societal conventions and myths around what makes a good or bad mother have limited the representations of maternal ambivalence and labour. Lived experiences of matrescence as depicted by mothers themselves have remained almost invisible with little exposure in galleries or mainstream art and media. Challenging complex and disparaging representations, or the erasure and invisibility of experiences of matrescence altogether, contemporary mother/artists working in the field of performance use their live bodies to subvert dominant images of conventional myths of motherhood. Using strategies of mimesis, liveness, embodiment, relationality, and performativity to render their own matrescent bodies, these artists explore historically pejorative theoretical concepts and aesthetics in new, feminist ways. This book frames performance as a site where becoming a mother can be understood as both a becoming and an unbecoming to expand understandings of matrescence.

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