Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity

Reviewed by Chrissy LaMaster

Rachel Epp Buller begins her introduction in "Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity" by posing a question to readers: is maternity appropriate? The answer (I don’t think I’m giving anything away here) is both yes and no. “Maternity is both a cultural ideal and a cultural taboo, both appropriate and inappropriate” she writes as she goes on to explain how she and co-editor Charles Reeve went about deciding upon the overarching theme for their book. The result of their effort, 20 texts by practicing artists, designers, curators and academic scholars, is an amazing collection of both essays and conversations and an invaluable addition to the field of maternal studies.

Divided into the three sections of “Body Politics,” “Family Practices,” and “By Design,” one finds scholarly essays interspersed with personal testaments, conversations and interviews. Contributors seek to “examine maternity’s centrality as a defining term of female identity” for all women, regardless of whether or not they have chosen to have children. In addition to Epp Buller herself, featured are many artists, writers, and collectives familiar to the Cultural ReProducers community: Courtney Kessel, Lena Simic, Irene Perez, Jill Miller, Lise Haller Baggesen, Miriam Schaer, and many others. These contributions are significant, thought provoking, and at times inspiring. One piece that stood out to me was a a conversation between the curator, artist, and scholar Natalie Loveless  and "mamactavists" Martina Mullaney (Enemies of Good Art), Christa Donner (Cultural ReProducers), and collaborators Andrea Francke and Kim Dhillon (Invisible Spaces of Parenthood). Many things have changed since that initial conversation, which took place in 2016, from the “#MeToo" movement to the global pandemic that has thrown the complex expectations of working mothers into sharper focus. It is interesting to reflect on the shifts that have taken place and what they may (or may not) mean for mother's rights, mother's bodies, mother artists, maternal studies, and mothers in general. I also appreciate the exchange of letters between Rachel Epp-Buller, Lena Simic and Emily Underwood-Lee for many of the same reasons. "Discussions" like these are rare in most books on maternal art, but it is this collective approach that makes the book engaging to a range of readers, from those seeking scholarly documentation of maternal art practices to any creative person thinking through their own dual labor as artists and caregivers, and perhaps seeking solidarity.

Lise Haller Baggesen, Mothernism, 2013-ongoing. Audio
Installation. Copyright Lise Haller Baggesen

As a feminist and an artist who is interested in a more authentic representation of motherhood within both contemporary art and society in general, I found the book particularly relevant. Although several excellent texts concerning the maternal in contemporary art have been published in recent years, "Inappropriate Bodies" has quickly become my favorite. It is a wonderfully diverse combination of critical theory and personal perspectives. Intentional in its design, it is at once academic and approachable, which allows it to be accessible (and I feel more useful) to anyone interested in issues surrounding the maternal in art. 

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Doreen Balabanoff, Birthing Room conceptual model, bird's
eye view, 2016. courtesy of the artist

"Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity" is published by Demeter Press,
an independent feminist press committed to publishing peer-reviewed scholarly work, fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction on mothering, reproduction, sexuality and family.

Chrissy LaMaster is an artist currently living in Billings, Montana. Chrissy holds an MFA in Photography and Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Illinois State University and an MA in Studio Art from Bradley University. Her primary areas of interest and research include the history of photography, gender studies, historical and contemporary representations of motherhood, and the history and theory of craft. Chrissy has experience in teaching, curating, and programming in a variety of arts related settings. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and can be found in both public and private collections.


   

Interview: Amber Dohrenwend

Amber at work in her home / studio. photo: Yuki Sato

 
Amber Dohrenwend is an educator and self-taught artist who grew up in the US and is now based in Tokyo. We first met Amber through a shared interest in Adventure Playgrounds: open-ended spaces where children shape their own environments using repurposed materials. Amber’s artistic practice – which developed in her small apartment with kids at home, using simple tools and recycled cardboard to make amazing things – feels especially relevant right now, as so many parenting artists find ourselves working to restructure creative time at home with what limited privacy and supplies we can manage.

This interview is the second in a series of conversations organized through Cultural ReProducers Tokyo, thoughtfully conducted by artist, art researcher, curator, and CR Tokyo organizer Catherine Harrington. These conversations explore some of the culturally-specific challenges of working as an artist-parent in Japan, and the fundamental questions we are all working to sort out together.

Cultural ReProducers Tokyo: To start, tell us a bit about you and your daughters.
 
Amber Dohrenwend: I am originally from Michigan in the U.S. and I grew up on a farm there. In 2018, my husband and I moved to Japan. Previously we were working in Egypt and Pakistan. My two daughters were born here (now nearly 8 and 10 years old.) We all have been deeply influenced by our time living in Japan. My daughters go to Japanese schools, and are really rooted in this place. I still feel like a foreigner, but Japan has also come to feel very familiar to me.

CR Tokyo: First as a parent and then as an artist, how did you begin to find community and connection here in Japan?

Amber: My husband teaches science here, so when we came there was a community of foreigners, but I was one of the few women at the time who was not working a day to day job, and was at home as a caregiver. This was a difficult time because I lost my identity as a professional. I really felt that because I wasn’t “making money” in many ways I was invisible. I had to build a new identity for myself from the ground up.

Amber working on a sculpture with her daughter. Photo: Peter Dohrenwend

I started studying Japanese at a nearby community center, then I started to make some Japanese friends through some of the early learning programs for children, and also by going to local adventure playgrounds. There were usually always a few people that spoke English, and would very generously help me navigate difficulties. It has taken a long time to build the patchwork community that I have here, and it’s very special to me. I know and spend time with a very diverse group of people.

In terms of the art community, I am a self-taught artist and I am still trying to find my place in the art world here. I mostly began my art practice in isolation, and until recently didn’t think I would be able to easily connect with artists in Japan because of the language barrier, but I am just now realizing it might be easier than I had thought. I’m excited about meeting people through Cultural ReProducers.

 CR Tokyo: During our conversation today, you said your journey into art practice began after you became a parent.  Can you tell us more about this journey, and how your art practice emerged in the midst of parenting?

Amber: I started working with cardboard as a material because it was easy to collect. I would just ride my bike around on recycling day and find interesting pieces of cardboard that other people in my neighborhood had put out. I didn’t need many tools or much space to work, and we lived in a small apartment. Even now I mostly work on the floor in my tatami room with just a pair of roofing shears and a stapler. It took me about 6 or 7 years of engaging with the material to get enough skill to be able to communicate my ideas.

When my children were very small, I was immersed in their worlds. We spent a lot of time playing together, and it was this time of engaging in the act of play again that really ignited a spark in me. As they grew and played, I played too. The play turned into making things for them, and then making things for myself, which became my current art practice.

CR Tokyo:  How do you manage to find a balance between your art practice and parenting? Do you schedule time to make artworks?

Amber: When my children were younger it was more of a struggle to work. I was mostly just exploring the material, but nevertheless I needed time to concentrate. I remember at one time I got a pair of overalls, and would try to wear them so that everyone in my family knew that when I was wearing the overalls, they couldn’t disturb me... but it didn’t really work. Sometimes there were times when my husband would take the kids to the park, or my children were napping that I could work, but mostly I had to wait until they entered school to have more time. Because I don’t have a studio, I wear headphones and listen to music when I work and my family is present, and sometimes I put the doors on the tatami room so I have more privacy. I sometimes even wear headphones at home without music when I am by myself, because I guess I have conditioned myself to know that’s a time to focus.

Detail from cardboard installation. Photo: Amber Dohrenwend

CR Tokyo: You mentioned that cardboard was a medium that was easy to come across in your area, and also that it was an easy medium to use in a small apartment space. Can you say more about why cardboard has continued to be a key part of your practice?  Has this medium taken on new meanings for you?

Amber: As I have reflected on my practice, I realize that collecting cardboard; foraging for it, makes me feel human. It takes me back to my childhood cutting willow branches and weaving them. I feel more connected to nature in this way than actually going to the park and walking through the forest.  Honestly, it’s a real puzzle to me, and I always wonder why green space doesn’t do more because I feel so intrinsically connected to nature. Collecting and making, and particularly communicating something  sculpturally through the use of a found material, it just feels good to me.

…I also feel very connected to the ephemeral nature of making things with cardboard. I don’t have a desire to make something that would physically outlast, me, in fact just the opposite. I am very devoted to the idea of impermanence, of making things that can be recycled and then made into something else; more paper, soil, staples that can be melted again, art, and on and on. Cardboard is a byproduct of consumerism, so I also think it is particularly interesting to show work in a consumer context, both subverting and promoting it at the same time. That tension feels very interesting to me.

I love that when you hold cardboard and shape it with your hands, you are actually leaving marks on the cardboard with your fingertips, much like when working with clay. This is something I find infinitely interesting; what cardboard looks like in this bent and twisted, softened state. This is the way I like to work with cardboard, and how I hope to keep making discoveries, and playing with this material.
"At one time I got a pair of overalls, and would try to wear them so that everyone in my family knew that when I was wearing the overalls, they couldn’t disturb me... Because I don’t have a studio, I wear headphones and listen to music when I work and my family is present"

CR Tokyo: How did you begin exhibiting your artwork in Japan?
Amber: Before showing my work, all along I was hosting pop-up cardboard play days, and teaching classes about working with cardboard. Before I started my current work, I was an elementary school teacher. Teaching is also about communicating ideas and engaging with people, so I’m sure that teaching people, making things and “playing” with others will always be a part of my practice.

 Through teaching, I got to know the designers Mike and Yuri Abelson who own Postalco, a Tokyo-based business and they really encouraged me. They asked me to do a workshop at their shop and then, later, create an installation for a window display. After that, I started to get some commercial work and the opportunity to do exhibitions and workshops.

Builders of all ages at Adventure Building Camp.
Image credit: Amber Dohrenwend

CR Tokyo:  You run a summer camp in Michigan and you run workshops on using tools for very young children.  Can you tell us more about these projects and practices?

Amber: Adventure Building Camp is a program I run in Michigan in the summer. It came about from spending time working with Gever Tulley who helped start a small educational movement in California, out of his experiences working in Silicon Valley.

His project, Tinkering School, was focused on an approach where children would learn tools in context through tinkering and experimentation rather than a step-by step: learn this, and then you can do that approach that we mostly find in education today. It’s very much process-based. When you need a tool, that’s when you learn how to use it. It was a counterpoint to technology and high stakes education and all of the simulation that kids face in learning, where they don’t actually get the experience to really do things, make things, try things out, make adjustments, and keep working. Tinkering School is a lot about removing the barriers that children face, so they can see for themselves if their ideas work. This is what inspired me to create Adventure Building Camp, which is based on the same philosophies as well as some of the guiding principles from Adventure Playgrounds where I have spent a lot of time here in Tokyo.

Working with kids in this way really surprised me, and also inspired my art practice. Teaching a 6-year-old to use a power drill and start building something out of wood and screws that they sketched, is a truly wonderful experience.

CR Tokyo:  When we talked earlier, it seemed that “tools” themselves have special significance for you.  I wonder if you could say more about this.

Amber: Yes, I love tools, I love really good tools. They are usually at the forefront of overcoming barriers. I could talk about this for a long time, but let me say that, one day when I was taking a shower, I had a kind of light bulb moment when a lot of the things that I had been thinking about and wondering about for many years came together, as a kind of unifying idea, and that idea was about understanding “barriers to making.” That has really become my “question,” even though it’s not really a question. I don’t know if many other people experience this, but I can’t really get away from the fact that most of what I do is always about engaging with this idea of thinking about barriers and how to remove them, both for myself and others, in all kinds of contexts.

So tools have this significance for me because they are often the things that I turn to when confronting barriers. For example, when I work with children, the main barrier they face is getting access to tools and materials because parents think the tools are too dangerous, or the kids can’t handle them. So I give them tools and materials, and I am there, and we slowly and safely work together and amazing things start happening.

This is also what I experienced working with cardboard, developing a relationship with tools so I could communicate my ideas. I think it’s about making space for the ideas and the connections.

CR Tokyo: Have you had any role models for artist-parenting/parent-artisting?

Amber: Images of Ruth Asawa weaving wire sculptures with her children at her feet have definitely been an inspiration to me.

CR Tokyo: What advice would you share with other artists struggling to be both a parent and an artist?

Amber: Parenting is a season of your life.
Do what you can. If you can’t make the art you want to make right now, put as many ideas down, and leave as many bread crumbs as you can for later. Live in the moment with your children and learn to play again.

If you are afraid of losing your career, or your identity, or of facing discrimination in the art world as a parent, all those things, I would say are very real. But, if we can make art we can make a new culture too, and there are more side roads in, and fewer gatekeepers now than there have been in the past. I want to be a part of changing the culture for parents making art and I hope you will too.

Amber introducing her work to the next generation. Photo: Minoru Nomura

Motherhood and Creative Practice, London

the inimitable Griselda Pollock addresses the audience at the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference.

This June, Cultural ReProducers took part in not one but two international gatherings exploring the role of motherhood in creative work. Here's our rundown of Part I:  the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference in London. Stay tuned for more about some of the great people and projects we encountered, and for Part II: the Mothernists, a three-day event in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

For anyone still harboring doubts that great artistic and scholarly work can go hand in hand with the labor of raising a child, this year's Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference, presented from June 1-2 at London South Bank University, offered a resounding affirmation of critical maternal thought.

Rachel Epp Buller presents on lactivist art intervention

During the past five years there has been a groundswell in work exploring the intersections of artmaking and parenthood. As soon as the call for abstracts was announced online, news of the  Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference spread rapidly despite its modest online presence. Organizers Dr. Elena Marchevska and Valerie Walkerdine had expected interest from a small group of local scholars, but soon found their inbox filled with more than 100 proposals from around the world. Being the skilled improvisers that mothers often are, they rose to the occasion and organized two jam-packed days of multimedia presentations by more than 60 leading feminist scholars, psychoanalysts, curators and artists, complemented by a rich program of film screenings, performances, and small exhibitions.

With so many presenters on the schedule, three panels ran simultaneously every hour in different parts of a labyrinthine LSBU building. Unlike more broadly-themed conferences in which deciding which panel to attend depends on your area of specialty, here it was often painfully difficult to choose. To get a sense of the options you can check out the full program online. Philosopher, artist, and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger opened the event with a heady discussion on carriance and the matrixial gaze accompanied by a projection of her hypnotic video work (I have since decided that all future lectures involving dense theoretical language should be presented this way). Faith Wilding and Irina Aristarkhova launched the second day with their riveting exploration of the real and speculative ramifications of surrogacy, IVF tourism, exogenesis, and the global market for

Christa introducing Cultural ReProducers

human tissue and egg donation. And prominent art historian and cultural scholar Griselda Pollock miraculously wove everything together into two smart and thoughtful session summaries.

Efforts were made to offer on-site childcare during the conference, albeit for a fee, but unfortunately - whether due to cost, ambivalence, or lack of information - not enough participants signed up to make this option viable in the end. A few mothers bounced, rocked, and fed their babies through sessions, while others worked out arrangements with family members. Several had to rush off before the day was done to collect their kids from local creches or schools.

Those of us visiting from out of town fit in time to visit some of London's great cultural institutions, and parental art seemed to be everywhere, from the abundance of 19th century maternal imagery at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Jaan Toomik's "Dancing with Dad" (2003) at Whitechapel Gallery to the Tate Modern's remarkable Sonia Delaunay retrospective, which highlighted Delaunay's first work of abstraction: a blanket created for her newborn son in 1911.

Mary Kelly was there in spirit, and on video

Like any really good party, not everyone could make it. One notable absence was Mary Kelly, matron saint of mother-artists and a scheduled keynote speaker, who had to cancel at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. A video was screened of her lecture earlier that week (though technical difficulties made it hard to decipher), followed by a response by scholar and MaMSIE co-founder Dr. Lisa Baraitser. There were noticeably few women of color present, a reflection of another imbalance in academia and the art world that will be important to consider as this conversation continues to evolve. On the intergenerational spectrum of things, though, the conference was incredible. Nursing mothers in the midst of their graduate studies exchanged experiences with seasoned feminist grandmothers. The discussion was also enriched by the voices of artists without children, including Miriam Schaer, who spoke eloquently about cultural bias against childless women and the challenges of “reverse mothering,” or caring for an aging parent.

processing some serious maternal thought over drinks

Beyond the formal presentations, this gathering brought together an incredible number of like-minded artists, curators, and scholars to meet in person for the first time. Catching a quick bite to eat between sessions we connected with members of Dublin’s Mothership Project, Rotterdam's m/other voices, London’s Enemies of Good Art and Invisible Spaces of Parenthood. Informal convoys took over nearby hotel lounges and restaurants to talk late into the night. After closing remarks on Tuesday, LSBU’s Edric Theater buzzed with women exchanging contact information, taking group photographs, and planning future projects. It seems clear that these conversations are just getting started, and we look forward to seeing what’s to come.