Duration 20min, 2024
In the slide projector installation Fragments and contradictions Magda Stützer-Tóthová compares her experiences as a mother with her own feminist position. The slides are based on research, reflections and the artist's own experiences and comprise individual text boards quoting personal observations and collaged images. The motifs depict social expectations of mothers as well as abstract masks that react to certain statements and images. The two-part slide show testifies to the ambivalence and transitory character of motherhood/parenthood. In Fragments and contradictions, Magda Stützer-Tóthová confronts thinkers such as Susan Sontag, who considered motherhood as the end of growth and achievement for women, and at the same time she confronts the cult of motherhood as the sole destiny of women, which has been spread widely since the Enlightenment. Even if the artist asks herself the question of regret, regretting motherhood does not determine her experience. Instead, she recognises that there are no two experiences of motherhood/parenthood alike and that answers can only be found within oneself. Answers that she tries to reflect on using fragments of text and images. Do your own experiences correspond with what motherhood is expected to be like? What role do exaggerated attributions play in this? Has the "natural" mother-child relationship been unmasked as an illusion of the Enlightenment?
Fragments and contradictions has been performed at Neue Galerie, Innsbruck
Foto: www.aslans.work
fragments and contradictions
In 2018 I became a mother.
It seemed to me, that I lost my feministic vision what my role in this should be.
“Maternal bliss conspires with maternal guilt,” Julie Phillips says - I often agree.
I also feel what psychoanalytic theorist Lisa Baraitser calls the “intractable problem of how ...
intellectual and maternal labor appear to cancel one another“.
maternal ambivalence
It is, however, not the loneliest time of my adult life.
Is there a theory of motherhood and the transformation of an artist-mother through this period of her life?
Is anyone out there, who can explain this to me?
I pause
I work my way through books, countless texts, words, like a hungry worm that gets dizzy from the flood of images.
my beloved
PARASITE
I let you make me so weak in my version of matrescence
After I read the painter Stella Bowen’s words: “I simply had not got any creative vitality to spare after I had played my part towards him and Julie (their daughter) and struggled through the day's chores.” I slowly start to acknowledge, that I might not be the only one feeling this way.
the MYSTIFACTION MYSTIFICATION of
JUSTIFICATION can finally start to end
“mystif(ic)action of justification”
cramps in my body in my brain
in my soul in loving disguise
Susan Sontag is not helping- she observed, to her annoyance, while she was ghostwriting her husband´s book on Freud´s influence, that mothering was the end of growth and achievement for a woman.
I am obviously searching for something in this material, for proof or some kind of evidence, so that I can show the world why I am trapped, where did I end up and that I didn’t give up trying not to lose myself - - without grieving the loss of my childless time or hesitating with the purpose of my new role - - No, no, I am sure, everything is fine.
The early analyst Alice Bálint wrote in 1939, that the ideal situation was one in which “the interests of mother and child are identical“.
when I became what I had not been before
I was overcome by a fatigue that was unknown to me until then
to take a break seemed to be impossible
my breath was not enough for three
my breath only reached to the doorstep
beyond that I had become a pause
not the one from before
nor what I would have become
but the tiny little slit in between
the annoying smell of LACK of SELF-REALIZATION is everywhere I look, I don’t even have to open my eyes. “the smell... is everywhere I look” – ist das Absicht?
the illusion of being a mother as the one thing I was meant to be, to disappear
It’s comforting to know that there is no such thing as the instinct of the MOTHER. Everyone can become a caring person, our brain structure needs some time and practice until we know how to react as a parent.
Despite of the neurological POV, there is this other question cruising in my head - am I a “good enough mother“- as the psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott described a mother-child relationship that is healthy and nurturing. And if yes, good enough for whom?
Yes, Camille Henrot, thank you for this one: „There is no global image, there is no ideal mother, there is no good-enough mother: there are only many, many singular forms of care, or lack thereof. “
Am I regretting this already? Regretting motherhood?
Or did I fall for „the increasing commercialization and artificiality of the institution of motherhood, its sugar-coated aesthetic in social media culture, the weight of domestic duties, and the narcissistic reward…“as Camille Henrot describes it in her book Milkyways.
Let´s not forget, the cult of true womanhood and the instinct of the mother, only exists because of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for breast-feeding and affectionate mothering.
I remain as “the impossible subject, par excellence ... a shadowy figure who seems to disappear from the many discourses that explicitly try to account for her,” these are Baraitser´s words, not mine - but I can relate.
The feeling of becoming a mother is indescribable - playwright Sarah Ruhl wonders, if this experience is even unstageable - beyond narrative and language - this thought leaves me behind unklar- all those staged images of women in my head...
I try to come back to something - but to what?
the fetishization of the artist studio
Where is my space? Rachel Cusk describes the kitchen; where she spends a lot of time with her baby for safety reasons, as a cell, a place of impossibility. I recognize this space and myself in it.
It is not a feeling of guilt that holds me back, it is a mixture of tiredness, disinterest and an inner reassurance that someone needs me more than I need myself. This self-abandonment is reflected in the initial neglect of physical space in the form of a studio.
But the lack of demarcation also has its price and is mapped on my skin, in places that are responsible for contact with the outside world. Rashes along my eyes, around my mouth and on my hands. Signals from my inner compass that I don't want to see and when I do see it, it disappears into the fog because I let it.
If Sheila Heti is right and the most feminine of all problems is that we don't take enough space or time or are not granted it then I MUST react before it’s too late.
Feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva calls mothering unnameable, while Ursula Le Guin, whom I admire on so many levels, described the fact of becoming a wife and mother as turning into “a nobody.”
Ughh, that is painful to read. A minor backlash.
Let´s try again, what about this one:
Julie Phillips says : „Many creative mothers have argued that their relationship with their children has deepened their sensibility, broadened their range, brought them, as Ursula Le Guin put it, “closer to the bone”.
I love these words by Rachel Cusk: “split in two ... like a divided stream…” - years after giving birth, I still feel this way.
But my shared self is here to focus and appreciate
to focus and appreciate
to focus and appreciate - what a stupid mantra! I have to find another one!
the presence of the interruption and the pause I became
I have to dig deep into myself until I open the door to my own space and when I do, years after my daughter was born, it feels like someone was expecting me long ago. No reproaches, no regrets, nothing I have missed, the time is just right to return from retreat.
since an unified self is an illusion and probably a fiction anyhow
But a lot has changed since Eva Hesse stated in 1965: “To achieve an ultimate expression... requires the complete dedication seemingly only man can attain. A singleness of purpose no obstructions allowed seems a man's prerogative. His domain. A woman is sidetracked by all her feminine roles from... cleaning house to remaining "young" and having babies.”
Thankfully Mierle Laderman Ukeles disagrees: “One night I just said to myself, ‘If I am the boss of my freedom, then I call maintenance, art.’ What am I doing? I'm taking a Western notion of art as freedom, and taking a non-Western notion of repetitive systems, and saying that's art. I'm crashing them together, actually.”
So what now? Where do I actually want to return to? After the years of isolation, which according to Hettie Judah remains a huge issue.
“Visibility generates change,” as the artist Kaylan Buteyn says.
Hello judgment and anxiety, depression and disapproval!
Also “paying for time needed to do speculative work, work that might not sell, or not be sold for months or years is hard to justify,” explains Catherine Kurtz.
So let’s work from home.
“The space available dictates the size of work, which shrinks from studio to domestic scale,” according to Hettie Judah. I agree and decide to shoot some video-footage.
NOW IS THE TIME TO FOCUS
My first show is at Galerie Tisk galerie asterisk* , an online Gallery, the year my daughter was born. This show never happened, but it’s still part of my CV and a political statement, initiated by Christina Stark.
The fact it took almost 10 years for Louise Bourgeois to show her work again after she became mother of three, feels somehow comforting, but the reason for this behavior - "I had the feeling that the art scene belonged to the men, and that I was in some way invading their domain. Therefore my work was done but hidden away." - reminds me of my own sentiments, except the gender reference.
My invasion would need to integrate my daily life into an art world which mostly takes no accounts of family life issues, therefore a decision needs to be made. But I am hiding from this one.
My very own maternal ghost unklar lost its autonomy, yes I know that now.
Sometimes I feel passive and after setting one foot forward I immediately withdraw my decisions. This might go on for a while.
No rush.
I plant radishes in my garden every year. I harvest them and then I eat them. At some point, the time for radishes is over and it's time for the next vegetable.
I've always had a passion for tomatoes. The time for tomatoes has not yet come.
the text slides are based on the books of
Sheila Heti - MOTHERHOOD
Moyra Davey - THE MOTHER READER
Julie Phillips -THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE
Adrienne Rich - OF WOMAN BORN
Rachel Cusk - A LIFE´S WORK
Hettie Judah - HOW NOT TO EXCLUDE ARTIST MOTHERS
Annika Rösler/Evelyn Höllrigl Tschaikner - MYTHOS MUTTERINSTINKT
and my own experience of writing my own motherhood plot.
Duration 20min, 2024
In the slide projector installation Fragments and contradictions Magda Stützer-Tóthová compares her experiences as a mother with her own feminist position. The slides are based on research, reflections and the artist's own experiences and comprise individual text boards quoting personal observations and collaged images. The motifs depict social expectations of mothers as well as abstract masks that react to certain statements and images. The two-part slide show testifies to the ambivalence and transitory character of motherhood/parenthood. In Fragments and contradictions, Magda Stützer-Tóthová confronts thinkers such as Susan Sontag, who considered motherhood as the end of growth and achievement for women, and at the same time she confronts the cult of motherhood as the sole destiny of women, which has been spread widely since the Enlightenment. Even if the artist asks herself the question of regret, regretting motherhood does not determine her experience. Instead, she recognises that there are no two experiences of motherhood/parenthood alike and that answers can only be found within oneself. Answers that she tries to reflect on using fragments of text and images. Do your own experiences correspond with what motherhood is expected to be like? What role do exaggerated attributions play in this? Has the "natural" mother-child relationship been unmasked as an illusion of the Enlightenment?
Fragments and contradictions has been performed at Neue Galerie, Innsbruck
Foto: www.aslans.work
fragments and contradictions
In 2018 I became a mother.
It seemed to me, that I lost my feministic vision what my role in this should be.
“Maternal bliss conspires with maternal guilt,” Julie Phillips says - I often agree.
I also feel what psychoanalytic theorist Lisa Baraitser calls the “intractable problem of how ...
intellectual and maternal labor appear to cancel one another“.
maternal ambivalence
It is, however, not the loneliest time of my adult life.
Is there a theory of motherhood and the transformation of an artist-mother through this period of her life?
Is anyone out there, who can explain this to me?
I pause
I work my way through books, countless texts, words, like a hungry worm that gets dizzy from the flood of images.
my beloved
PARASITE
I let you make me so weak in my version of matrescence
After I read the painter Stella Bowen’s words: “I simply had not got any creative vitality to spare after I had played my part towards him and Julie (their daughter) and struggled through the day's chores.” I slowly start to acknowledge, that I might not be the only one feeling this way.
the MYSTIFACTION MYSTIFICATION?? of
JUSTIFICATION can finally start to end
“mystif(ic)action of justification” – unklar ja genau
cramps in my body in my brain
in my soul in loving disguise
Susan Sontag is not helping- she observed, to her annoyance, while she was ghostwriting her husband´s book on Freud´s influence, that mothering was the end of growth and achievement for a woman.
I am obviously searching for something in this material, for proof or some kind of evidence, so that I can show the world why I am trapped, where did I end up and that I didn’t give up trying not to lose myself - - without grieving the loss of my childless time or hesitating with the purpose of my new role - - No, no, I am sure, everything is fine.
The early analyst Alice Bálint wrote in 1939, that the ideal situation was one in which “the interests of mother and child are identical“.
when I became what I had not been before
I was overcome by a fatigue that was unknown to me until then
to take a break seemed to be impossible
my breath was not enough for three
my breath only reached to the doorstep
beyond that I had become a pause
not the one from before
nor what I would have become
but the tiny little slit in between
the annoying smell of LACK of SELF-REALIZATION is everywhere I look, I don’t even have to open my eyes. “the smell... is everywhere I look” – ist das Absicht?
the illusion of being a mother as the one thing I was meant to be, to disappear unklar
It’s comforting to know that there is no such thing as the instinct of the MOTHER. Everyone can become a caring person, our brain structure needs some time and practice until we know how to react as a parent.
Despite of the neurological POV, there is this other question cruising in my head - am I a “good enough mother“- as the psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott described a mother-child relationship that is healthy and nurturing. And if yes, good enough for whom?
Yes, Camille Henrot, thank you for this one: „There is no global image, there is no ideal mother, there is no good-enough mother: there are only many, many singular forms of care, or lack thereof. “
Am I regretting this already? Regretting motherhood?
Or did I fall for „the increasing commercialization and artificiality of the institution of motherhood, its sugar-coated aesthetic in social media culture, the weight of domestic duties, and the narcissistic reward…“as Camille Henrot describes it in her book Milkyways.
Let´s not forget, the cult of true womanhood and the instinct of the mother, only exists because of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for breast-feeding and affectionate mothering.
I remain as “the impossible subject, par excellence ... a shadowy figure who seems to disappear from the many discourses that explicitly try to account for her,” these are Baraitser´s words, not mine - but I can relate.
The feeling of becoming a mother is indescribable - playwright Sarah Ruhl wonders, if this experience is even unstageable - beyond narrative and language - this thought leaves me behind unklar- all those staged images of women in my head...
I try to come back to something - but to what?
the fetishization of the artist studio
Where is my space? Rachel Cusk describes the kitchen; where she spends a lot of time with her baby for safety reasons, as a cell, a place of impossibility. I recognize this space and myself in it.
It is not a feeling of guilt that holds me back, it is a mixture of tiredness, disinterest and an inner reassurance that someone needs me more than I need myself. This self-abandonment is reflected in the initial neglect of physical space in the form of a studio.
But the lack of demarcation also has its price and is mapped on my skin, in places that are responsible for contact with the outside world. Rashes along my eyes, around my mouth and on my hands. Signals from my inner compass that I don't want to see and when I do see it, itdisappears into the fog because I let it.
“it” bezieht sich auf “inner compass”?
If Sheila Heti is right and the most feminine of all problems is that we don't take enough space or time or are not granted it then I MUST react before it’s too late.
Feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva calls mothering unnameable, while Ursula Le Guin, whom I admire on so many levels, described the fact of becoming a wife and mother as turning into “a nobody.”
Ughh, that is painful to read. A minor backlash.
Let´s try again, what about this one:
Julie Phillips says : „Many creative mothers have argued that their relationship with their children has deepened their sensibility, broadened their range, brought them, as Ursula Le Guin put it, “closer to the bone”.
I love these words by Rachel Cusk: “split in two ... like a divided stream…” - years after giving birth, I still feel this way.
But my shared self is here to focus and appreciate
to focus and appreciate
to focus and appreciate - what a stupid mantra! I have to find another one!
the presence of the interruption and the pause I became
I have to dig deep into myself until I open the door to my own space and when I do, years after my daughter was born, it feels like someone was expecting me long ago. No reproaches, no regrets, nothing I have missed, the time is just right to return from retreat.
since an unified self is an illusion and probably a fiction anyhow
But a lot has changed since Eva Hesse stated in 1965: “To achieve an ultimate expression... requires the complete dedication seemingly only man can attain. A singleness of purpose no obstructions allowed seems a man's prerogative. His domain. A woman is sidetracked by all her feminine roles from... cleaning house to remaining "young" and having babies.”
Thankfully Mierle Laderman Ukeles disagrees: “One night I just said to myself, ‘If I am the boss of my freedom, then I call maintenance, art.’ What am I doing? I'm taking a Western notion of art as freedom, and taking a non-Western notion of repetitive systems, and saying that's art. I'm crashing them together, actually.”
So what now? Where do I actually want to return to? After the years of isolation, which according to Hettie Judah remains a huge issue.
“Visibility generates change,” as the artist Kaylan Buteyn says.
Hello judgment and anxiety, depression and disapproval!
Also “paying for time needed to do speculative work, work that might not sell, or not be sold for months or years is hard to justify,” explains Catherine Kurtz.
So let’s work from home.
“The space available dictates the size of work, which shrinks from studio to domestic scale,” according to Hettie Judah. I agree and decide to shoot some video-footage.
NOW IS THE TIME TO FOCUS
My first show is at Galerie Tisk galerie asterisk* ???, an online Gallery, the year my daughter was born. This show never happened,unklar but it’s still part of my CV and a political statement, initiated by Christina Stark.
The fact it took almost 10 years for Louise Bourgeois to show her work again after she became mother of three, feels somehow comforting, but the reason for this behavior - "I had the feeling that the art scene belonged to the men, and that I was in some way invading their domain. Therefore my work was done but hidden away." - reminds me of my own sentiments, except the gender reference.
My invasion would need to integrate my daily life into an art world which mostly takes no accounts of family life issues, therefore a decision needs to be made. But I am hiding from this one.
My very own maternal ghost unklar lost its autonomy, yes I know that now.
Sometimes I feel passive and after setting one foot forward I immediately withdraw my decisions. This might go on for a while.
No rush.
I plant radishes in my garden every year. I harvest them and then I eat them. At some point, the time for radishes is over and it's time for the next vegetable.
I've always had a passion for tomatoes. The time for tomatoes has not yet come.
the text slides are based on the books of
Sheila Heti - MOTHERHOOD
Moyra Davey - THE MOTHER READER
Julie Phillips -THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE
Adrienne Rich - OF WOMAN BORN
Rachel Cusk - A LIFE´S WORK
Hettie Judah - HOW NOT TO EXCLUDE ARTIST MOTHERS
Annika Rösler/Evelyn Höllrigl Tschaikner - MYTHOS MUTTERINSTINKT
and my own experience of writing my own motherhood plot.
© 2019 Magda Tothova
© 2019 Magda Tothova