“… ‘femininity’ can be understood not as a natural essence but as a complicated edifice which patriarchy demands in order to give ‘masculinity’ meaning and strength.”
Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document is a sensuous, Lacanian influenced documentation of the mother-child relationship; ensuing the consequential re-formation and development of the mother and the child’s respective identities. PPD is Kelly’s most renowned work; a large scale installation consisting of 135 pieces, divided into 6 subcategories, progressively mapping the separation between mother and baby – specifically; Kelly and her own son. Identity is referenced by the work extrinsically within the artist-audience relationship; Kelly’s identity as a feminist artist, and intrinsically within the artist-artwork framework; Kelly’s negative identity, determined by the progressive independence of her son.
Drawing from Lacan’s neo-Freudian ideas concerning psychoanalysis in relation to unconscious development, Kelly accompanies series of meticulously recorded fragments of her son’s early development with “pseudo-scientific language … to counter the assumption that childcare is based on women’s natural and instinctive understanding of the role of mothering” . Included within her recordings of her son; Kelly exhibits feeding charts, faecal stains, first and/or significant speech utterances, first drawings, plaster casts and a jarring array of both objective and subjective journalistic entries made by the artist herself.
PPD recounts to its viewers the progressive stages of Kelly’s consecutive identity roles in relation to her son’s growth. During the ante-partum (pregnancy) and breastfeeding stages respectively, Lacanian thought suggests the symbolic role of the mother is temporarily heightened to that of a self-fulfilled, narcissistic being, within an inherently symbiotic relationship with her child; the child effectively becoming the phallus. However, as time progresses and the child becomes more independent, the mother “… experiences a sense of loss that … Kelly describes as reliving her own Oedipal drama, undergoing castration for the second time and re-learning the fact of her negative place in the symbolic order.”
It is at this point in the mother-child relationship that review critic Laura Mulvey suggests the mother has two possible options; “recognition … of her place or rebellion against it … her rebellion takes the form of fetishisation of the child (as substitute phallus), clinging to the couple relationship”. This fetishisation of the child is actively taken up by Kelly within the context of the artwork, thus, enabling the transgression of her intrinsic identity to that of her extrinsic identity. By channeling the compulsive energies of mapping her son’s progress into her artwork, Kelly effectively relinquishes any sense of attachment to the symbiosis between herself and her son, simultaneously upholding two separate identities.
References
Mulvey, L. “Post-Partum Document Review” in Post-Partum Document, Mary Kelly. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
Kelly, M. Preface to Post-Partum Document, by Mary Kelly. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
Kelly, M. Post Partum Document. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
Isaak, J. “Our Mother Tongue: The Post-Partum Document” in Post-Partum Document, Mary Kelly. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
Iverson, M. “The bride stripped bare by her own desire: reading Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document” in Post-Partum Document, Mary Kelly. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
Kelly, M. Imaging Desire. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
Nasio, J. Five Lessons of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan, trans. David Pettigrew and Francois Raffoul. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Image References
Kelly, M. Post-Partum Document: Documentation I, 1974. Analysed faecal stains and feeding charts (prototype), (detail). Perspex unit, white card, diaper linings, plastic sheeting, paper, ink. 1 of the 7 units, 28 x 35,5cm. Collection Generali Foundation, Vienna. Reproduced from Postmasters, http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/MK/PPDDocI.html# (accessed August 28th, 2009).
Kelly, M. Post-Partum Document. 1976. Transitional Objects, Diary and Diagram (detail), Perspex unit, white card, body/hand imprint in clay, Plaster of Paris, cotton fabric, string. 1 of the 8 units, 28 x 35.5 cm each. Collection, Zurich Museum. Reproduced from Postmasters, http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/MK/PPDDocIV.html# (accessed August 28th, 2009).
Kelly, M. Post-Partum Document: Introduction, 1973, (detail). Perspex unit, white card, wool vests, pencil, ink. 1 of the 4 units, 20 x 25.5 cm each. Collection Peter Norton Family Foundation. Reproduced from Postmasters, http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/MK/PPDIntro.html# (accessed August 28th, 2009).
No comments:
Post a Comment