Unfinished Business
Lauren McLaughlin discusses the work of Emma O’Brien for Issue 3 of OVER Journal.
Ten years ago when Emma O’Brien became pregnant with her child, mothers were still largely excluded from the mainstream art world, and representations of maternal subjectivities were still firmly placed in the margins. The long held patriarchal view that women could not possibly be both artists and mothers successfully, had found its way into Emma’s own self belief and forced her to abandon her practice entirely for the first few years of her child’s life. The Holding Place (2020) is Emma’s triumphant return to her photographic practice and a transformational body of work in which the artist turns the camera on herself and her child to document the everyday realities as a working mother.
During the course of the pandemic, motherhood had a bit of a moment. Lockdown unearthed the harsh realities of domestic inequality (1) which saw women undertake the majority of childcare, homeschooling and domestic labour (2), the collision of public and private domains forcing a global conversation on the unsustainable conditions working mothers found themselves in. Two years on however, it feels as though these conversations have once again been pushed to the back burner of political consciousness. Lockdown not only presented Emma with the time to take the images and create these dialogues, it was also the added incentive to formulate her ideas into a finished body of work at a time when it felt even more pertinent to uncover the maternal voice. The Holding Place both tenderly and defiantly confronts us with the realities of a mother’s unpaid emotional labour, making visible the ‘second shift’ and asking, how can we care for others and for ourselves?
While feminist artists of the second wave declared the personal as political and pushed for women to take up their rightful space in the public sphere, the bi-product was a further devaluing of the status of the domestic sphere and the role of mothers (3). Grounded in a matricentric feminism (a feminism which positions mother’s needs and concerns as the starting point for women’s empowerment), Emma’s work echos the calls for motherhood and caregiving to be valued for it’s contribution to society by bringing these overlooked aspects of a mothers lived experience into artistic visibility. As Andrea O’Reilly declares; “Motherhood, it could be said, is the unfinished business of feminism”.
Like many artist mothers, particularly in those early years, Emma grappled with the incompatibility of caring for a young child and sustaining a practice; the isolation from the traditional art scene, the lack of opportunities to network with peers, and the difficulty in attending residencies had all contributed to her self limiting beliefs around continuing her work. In recent years, we have seen some progress as organisations begin to respond to the needs of artists with caring responsibilities: parenting artist residencies have been instigated (4), alternative gallery models for artist mothers have been formed (5) and this September saw the launch of Hettie Judah’s new book outlining ‘How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers’ (6) was published in September. While these are all hugely positive strides for welcoming mothers back into the art world, the representation of motherhood itself still has a way to go, and those who do confront the maternal subject directly are often still met with limiting and patronising attitudes (7).
When I asked Emma how she found her way back to her photographic practice after years of abandonment, she told me that despite her own narratives around not having the time to make any work, she realised in fact that she was making the work all along, just not in the way she had before. She was already taking the photos, intuitively documenting her everyday life with whatever camera was to hand. The work was already there, it just needed to be valued in the context of her practice. We see this unfolding realisation come through in the images themselves as her lens hones in on the uneventful daily practice of mothering where nothing is happening yet where everything is happening. A stacked pile of laundry, her son’s bored expression, an empty street, the remains of breakfast, each image builds upon the next in an almost meditative way to proclaim: here is value.
The Holding Place is far removed from the heavily constructed imagery of motherhood that is so ingrained in our culture, one which is dominated by the cultural legacy of the Madonna and child in Euro-centric art and pits mothers as either saintly or sinful (8). Rather, Emma combines self-portraits, archival smart phone images and domestic landscapes which seek to portray a much more complex and honest dialogue on mothering; one whereby a contradictory set of emotions can exist. Two images from the series present this contradiction so well; Morning Hug (2020) capturing that deep love between parent and child in which Emma’s child tenderly wraps himself over his mothers body as she lays in bed, and The Mother Load (2020) which sees Emma lying face down on her child’s bed surrounded by soft toys, her son defiantly sitting on top of her body as if she were a play thing. Both images see Emma obscured by the physical weight of her son but say much more about the emotional weight of motherhood; her body used as a vessel for comfort and distraction, and as an object that blends into the architecture of the home. Indeed, the majority of the self-portraits in the series see the artist obscured, cropped out of the frame or hidden within the domestic landscape. This imagery echoes the ‘hidden mothers’ of the 1800’s Victorian era (9) whereby mothers' bodies were draped in cloth or curtains and used as a mere prop to hold up the infant child to be photographed. The symbolic legacy of these hidden mother images continue to feel relevant as mothers today grapple with a loss of individual identity outside their role as caregiver. Where Emma does feature her own portrait, she is recognising and reminding the viewer of her presence; physically, personally and politically and conveying all the contradictory emotions that come with her. As Emma states (10):
“...it hints at my simmering rage and frustration borne by the imbalances of motherhood while also proclaiming my contradictory feelings of love and devotion. I aim to show the value of caring and nurturing, while exposing the patriarchal capitalist structures that impose an experience of entrapment on mothers.”
Annette Messenger said that the artist does not create something but is there to point out what already exists (11). The Holding Place does just that; it points out and places value upon that which historically has been undervalued in both art and society. It beckons us to see things from the mothers subjective point of view and demands that we, as a society, pay attention to the unreasonable expectations placed on mothers and all those who undertake mothering work.
Despite the devaluing of the domestic sphere, the home is in fact a key social institution which produces change. By centering domestic and mothering work as valid areas of artistic inquiry, we can transform the way in which care is valued, and indeed whose responsibility it is to provide that care. Change can be slow but if we can implement change on an individual level, soon we can affect collective change. For Emma, these changes have already been implemented in the way she lives her life. She now demands more contribution at home from her partner, works shorter hours outside the home and centres her practice as an equally valuable part of her working life; an investment that seems to have strengthened her relationships with her family and with her practice. It has been transformational; “I’m finally placing value upon my arts practice and on my domestic labour.” These conversations are only just beginning but The Holding Place provides a poignant and powerful tool for mothers to begin to shift their own perspectives on how they value their own work, time and experience. That's how change can happen; one image, one artist, one mother at a time.
References:
1 Milford Morse, M., & Anderson, G. (2020, April 14). How the COVID-19 Crisis is Exacerbating Gender Inequality. unfoundation.org. Retrieved from https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/shadow-pandemic-how-covid19-crisis-exacerbating-gender-inequality/
2 Oppenheim, M. (2020, May 14). Coronavirus: Women bearing burden of childcare and homeschooling in lockdown, study finds. The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-childcare-homeschooling-women-lockdown-gender-a9512866.html
3 O’Reilly, A. (2019). Matricentric Feminism: A Feminism for Mothers. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 10(1/2)
4 Cow House Studios. (2021, October 25). Parenting Artist Residency. Retrieved from https://cowhousestudios.com/parenting-artist-residency/
5 Spilt Milk. (n.d.). Spilt Milk Gallery CIC’s Artist Membership Network. Spilt Milk Gallery. Retrieved from https://www.spiltmilkgallery.com/membership
6 Judah, H. (2022, September 26). How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and Other Parents) (Hot Topics in the Art World). Lund Humphries.
7 Judah, H. (2020, December 4). ‘Motherhood is taboo in the art world – it’s as if we’ve sold out’: female artists on the impact of having kids. Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/dec/02/motherhood-taboo-art-world-sold-out-bourgeoisie
8 Macdonald, M. (1995). Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media (1st ed.). Hodder Education Publishers.
9 Cheng, A. Y., & Barnett, E. (2020, May 12). Victorian Mothers Hidden in Photos of Their Babies. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/05/victorian-mothers-hidden-photos-their-babies/611347/
10 O’Brien, E. (2020). The Holding Place. Emma O’Brien. Retrieved 18 September 2022, from https://emmaobrienphoto.com/projects/the-holding-place/
11 Johnstone, S. (2008). The Everyday: Documents of contemporary art. London, Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press.