On locating myself in maternalised landscapes: curating, mapping and (re)inscribing Live Art walking performances.

Abstract

To many, the maternal is synonymous with the domestic space, and artistic work made by mothers is therefore anticipated as emerging from this realm and using its aesthetics, be these emotional or material. Cultural residues from the 18th-century continue to frame the Romantic landscape, the suburbs, and the female body itself as maternal spaces, which offer a background to the male subject position and are usually silenced within cultural discourses. This practice-based research documents artistic walking performances made by a mother within what I will be calling maternalised spaces in order to respond to the assumptions and power structures therein. Re-purposing a range of mapping techniques, I articulate the perspective of inhabitant rather than surveyor of this spatialised subject position, and consider how this may be communicated, categorised and curated. My choices surrounding the documentation of these walks consider the politics of biological and mediated reproduction, and respond to notions of ‘selflessness’ for artist and mother in a post-structural age. I evaluate feminist artistic strategies of the past and offer new understandings of maternal aesthetics and practices, suggesting that the multidirectional and intersubjective relational tools of geography offer appropriate and non-essentialised ways to articulate these spaces from within.