This symposium was designed around the juxtaposition of two films, both about the disappearance of the director’s mother: Liseli Marazzi when Alina was 7, Clotilde Vautier when Mariana was 5. Neither child was told anything about the circumstances of her mother’s death. Using differing aesthetic strategies, both films investigate the mother’s life and, in the process of unraveling the mystery of her disappearance, reveal social and psychosocial problems and issues that continue to be relevant for feminism. But the directors also use cinema and narration to address their own loss, creating a moving and emotional, as well as a historical and political, dialogue between the two films.
Screening: Histoire d’un secret (Mariana Otero 2003) and Un’ora sola ti vorrei (Alina Marazzi 2002)
Motherhood, Servitude and the Delegation of care.
This show addressed issues of labour, social class, capital, care and the maternal. Lisa Baraitser was joined by Stella Sandford, Mirca Madianou, Imogen Tyler and Gail Lewis to discuss the privatisation of maternal labour, and the diverse ways ‘maternal care’ has been, and continues to be delegated and shared. Our discussion ranged from Marxist Feminism through to the creative ways that mothers in the global south are continuing to parent their children while providing maternal labour for mothers in the global north.
Joined by two figurative London based artists, Charlotte Lindsay and Eline van den Boogaard, Rebecca Baillie considered the notion that it is often artists without children, or those distanced in someway from the everyday experience of child rearing, who best articulate the meaning of maternity. Rebecca Baillie is a London based artist and writer. Charlotte Lindsay is a painter and founder of BHVU Gallery. Eline van den Boogaard is a photographer and curator.
Celebrating Rozsika Parker 1945-2010
A Day Symposium on Art Feminism and Psychoanalysis
The Symposium explored the many facets of Rozsika Parker’s unique and influential contribution to feminist interventions in art criticism and history, psychotherapy, psychoanalytical theories of maternal ambivalence and body dysmorphia.