essays & writing
Sunset out the plane window, Friday August 30, 2024
“Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature”
Alexia Casiano
Project Proposal: Fall 2023
MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing, CIIS
Abstract:
Exploring monumental transition, creation, and sacred healing, “Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature” is a collection of artworks in an environmental context that explores the birth of a mother, the relationship between grief, healing, and nature, and a new outlook on climate resilience. The work seeks to highlight the parallels between becoming a parent and the sacrifices made by the earth in bearing and sustaining humanity. The artist investigates how to rediscover connection with nature even in the midst of human interferance, and searches for space and time for rest and reconnection with the body in order to heal the soul. The archetypal “inner child” emerges in this work to help find bridges between the past and present, grief and joy. Examples of work include text-based paintings which question the nature of trauma, grief, and identity; woven canopies, nests, and blankets made of reclaimed cardboard, plastic, and textiles (as well as natural materials such as grasses, leaves, and mud) which conceptually speak to a mother’s desire to protect, nurture – and rest. Installing the artwork in the artist’s own backyard highlights the vulnerability and temporality of life and the importance of reckoning with the environment that we live in, while deepening inquiry into the changes that materials face over time – both becoming more resilient, and being reclaimed by nature. “Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature” aims to further conversations with parents, caregivers, and the larger community about climate resilience, transitions and major life changes, and intergenerational healing.
Project Scope:
“Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature” is an art installation project composed of sculptures, paintings, and installations exploring the seismic transition through gestation and birth, and how the connections between past and future generations are related to the inner child, personal and collective healing, and survival in a changing climate.
This work is both personal and universal. It’s about the transition to parenthood, but also about identity, trauma, grief, healing; mental, physical, and spiritual wellness—and climate resiliency. A mother’s body needs rest to heal the traumas of gestation and childbirth, and the earth needs time to rest and recover as well.
The full body of work will include pieces about pregnancy, childbirth, and (re)finding one’s identity as an adult/parent, woven together with a deeper understanding of nature and the future of the planet our children will inherit. More universally, the project contains themes of experiencing a major transition, and marking time as life (and the environment) changes around and within us.
The work will be installed over the next year in the artists’ backyard and documented during installation, with the intention of hosting an exhibition “opening” and inviting the community. The vulnerability and temporality of an outdoor exhibition poses unique challenges yet also highlights the urgency of reckoning with the environment that we live in and protecting it for future generations. Furthermore, the process of building temporary structures and sourcing the materials and tools necessary to complete the final project in this location requires collaboration with other artists, builders, and neighbors. The completed exhibition will also include a participatory creative project, including space for participants to reflect and contribute personal experiences. By working with the community to bring this project to fruition, “Matrescence” aims to further conversations with other parents, caregivers, and the community about climate resilience and intergenerational healing.
Why this work?
“Matrescence”–becoming a mother–is a term first used by American medical anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 and more recently studied and expanded on by psychologist Aurelie Athan and others (see bibliography). Matrescence, like adolescence, is a developmental stage that lasts for years (or, arguably, a lifetime). It encompassing the periods of “pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond… The scope of the changes encompasses multiple domains – bio-psycho-social-political-spiritual” (Athan, matrescence.com).
This project was born out of the artists’ desire to deeply process and understand the inner change emerging from a major life transition – birthing a person, and the simultaneous rebirth of artistic identity – and the parallels to the external changes that the earth is enduring due to human activity and climate change. The resulting multimedia explorations cover a range of emotions and themes including grief, horror, fear, anxiety, rage, joy, and the relationship to time (gestation, aging, a changing climate, past and future generations).
Artist’s Statement:
As an artist, parent, and MFA student, I grapple with limited time and space in addition to larger questions of meaning in my work. I wanted to work on a larger scale and to explore installation work. I have a philosophy of creative reuse and always look first to what is already available – I realized that could apply to space as well as materials.
I currently have limited indoor studio space, but a large backyard. I became intrigued by the interplay between the materials and the environment: cardboard that I left outside would get rained on, and actually seemed to mold to the structures I was building more easily after getting wet and drying out multiple times. The material became more flexible and tougher in some ways, while also becoming vulnerable to mold and deterioration. I became curious about constructing elements of sculptures out of paper pulp and leaving them outside – how long would they take to disintegrate, for instance? The interplay of materiality and time evokes for me both grief and excitement: a way to express the changes that take place during major life transitions.
Working outside also forced me to contend with the environment in a way that I normally am shielded from. As a society we have become so accustomed to avoiding the realities of the natural world (rain, sun, bugs) and as we continue to contend with climate change, we are apt to hide inside even more – from smoke and fires, extreme heat and extreme storms. I believe we can’t really understand and adapt to climate change until we learn how to accept the natural world in general.
The environment that we live in is the home that we all share. Climate change affects the very air we breathe and the weather patterns we experience; no one is immune, but marginalized communities are far more affected (both locally, at the neighborhood level, and globally, particularly in the global south and island nations). As I think about my responsibilities as a parent, I think more about my responsibilities to the environment as well. I want to build an outdoor gallery/installation because it engages the viewer with these questions of environmental exposure and the passage of time. We are all here for a limited time; what do we want to leave behind? I want these thoughts to underscore the powerful messages of transformation in the works themselves, just as climate change is the undercurrent of everything we do.
I have always been drawn to using recycled materials and reusing found objects in my work. As a child, we were taught to “recycle, reduce, reuse,” and I learned to look at empty packaging as raw materials for creating something new. As an adult, I grapple with the amount of stuff that we buy, and the packaging that it leaves in its wake. In the context of a global pandemic and then a pregnancy, I found myself ordering more things online, and the cardboard boxes piled up. I feel both guilty about and enthralled by all this raw material, and my inner child gets excited about seeing what we can make from this trash – making something from “nothing” – though there is always a hidden cost in what gets discarded and returned to the elements.
As I’ve transitioned to parenthood, I think more and more about what I’m teaching my child about consumerism, and about how the environment is changing (largely because of capitalism and global companies), and what kind of a world my child will grow up in. Climate change starts with everything we manufacture and buy, how we get around, what we eat, and how we live – and the governments that regulate (or don’t) the factories that support our lifestyles – but it affects how we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, animals and ecosystems, how much we can enjoy the outdoors, and our quality of life. For millions of people around the globe, climate change costs them their livelihoods and lives.
What can you or I do to interrupt this cycle? How can we address our own, and our children’s, growing sense of climate anxiety? One place that I am able to address these issues and start building hope and climate resilience is transforming trash into art that can spark conversations. The term “climate resilience” encompasses both emotional coping strategies (ie, acceptance) and practical solutions to mitigate climate change and adapt to new environments. I think about how I will help my child understand their environmental context and build climate resiliency, in the same way I am learning how to breathe life into sculptures and installations that can literally weather the storms. I can’t help but think not just of her future, but generations past and future as well. We are all connected, but life for future generations is uncertain. As I heal from the transformation my body has endured through childbirth and parenting, I dream of rest and healing for the earth itself.
Materials
The majority of the individual pieces in this installation are (or will be) made from recycled materials (primarily cardboard, but also plastic, textiles, reclaimed wood, tin from formula cans, etc.) and/or readily available natural materials (such as grasses, branches, leaves, and mud). It is extremely difficult to recycle everything that we buy as parents, or to always use reusable or sustainable products. There is a huge paradox, even a hypocritical nature, to parenting in the first world while being concerned about climate change. This paradox drives the choices of materials, with careful consideration of what needs to be purchased new for this project and what can be sourced from discarded materials, packaging, and sustainable sources (such as Seattle ReCreative, a local creative re-use store that sells secondhand materials).
The work is visually unified through repeated use of raw cardboard as a material (and a color, closely related to the color of earth), with contrasting brightly-colored elements (which may include acrylic paint, string and fabric) representative of childhood, playfulness, and innocence.
Audience
The prospective in-person audience is the artist’s local community – neighbors, artists, students, parents, teachers, and those interested in climate resilience. The documentation and online exhibition materials, posted on a website dedicated to this project, will be available to all adults interested in the visual arts, especially those interested in the relationship among parents, children, inner children, past and future generations, and environmental work. The hope and intention is that this work will be relatable to everyone, not just parents; a chance for connection and conversation for everyone who views it.
These are universal themes because everyone has been a child; everyone has had parents (or dealt with their absence); everyone is connected to past generations, and will eventually leave this world to future generations. Everyone is affected by the changing climate. Everyone grapples with their own mental health, sense of identity, and how to survive and thrive in this world. Everyone has experienced or will experience some major transition(s) in their lives – whether or not it involves becoming a parent. This project poses an interest in what we all share through those experiences of major life transition, and how we re-find ourselves in the process.
Specific audience subsets who may be interested in this work include: new parents; prospective parents; those who raise or work with infants or small children; the birth community; those seeking to heal from past trauma or reconnect with their inner child; people interested in exploring the nature of the body, the self, and identity; anyone concerned about climate change and the fate of future generations.
Themes:
Themes include: transitions, change, gestation, birth, the body, identity, childhood, the inner child, lineage, generations, trauma, mental health, grief, safety, rest, and healing; connections and community; time and space; climate change, environmental awareness and climate resilience.
Zones of Inquiry:
How are the sacrifices of a parent/birth parent similar to the sacrifices of the Earth in bearing humanity?
What spaces does a (birth) parent have to simply rest and heal?
Are we “children” of the Earth? When and how does the Earth get to rest and heal?
What does “trans-” mean to you? Transition, transformation, transfiguration, transgendered, transubstantiation — what do these things all have in common?
What is a major transformation that you have been through? How has it changed you? In what ways can you sit with that change, either metaphorically or physically, in space and time?
How, as artists, can we capture the passage of time, and dwell in the temporal and ephemeral?
Is healing a spiritual experience? What is the role of pain and grief in healing, joy, and wholeness?
What is the relationship between past and future generations?
What can children teach us about ourselves and the natural world?
What can nature teach us about letting go, giving in, resting, and healing?
Where does the “inner child” reside in relation to one’s own children?
What can the accumulation of raw materials – cardboard, tin cans, bottles, plastic – tell us about our own lives? Are these materials “free”?
Can trash as a material be used to understand grief and resilience in the face of climate change?
How can climate resilience be a metaphor for emotional and spiritual healing of our own personal and generational traumas?
How can tending to the emerging mother serve as a metaphor for healing the earth?
Image Samples (work by Alexia Casiano)
Nest (photographed outside), 2022, appx. 10” x 9” x 4”, cardboard, ginger candy wrappers, protein bar wrappers, string and safety pins from maternity clothing tags.
Protest Bellies #3, 2022, digital photograph.
I am not my mother, I am not my child, 2023, 24” x 36”, gesso on cardboard.
Crib Decay, March to November 2023, cardboard and string, backyard, time.
Backyard (Kirkland/Seattle, WA) – future site for installation of “Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature”
sketch for “sacred bodies” sculpture, 2023
IHADABABYANDIT’STHEHARDESTTHINGI’VEEVERDONE, acrylic on hand-stretched canvas, 36” x 48”, July - November 2023
Annotated Bibliography:
Athan, Aurélie, Ph.D. www.matrescence.com
I am a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University where I revive the term Matrescence through teaching and writing. Our graduate-level courses and certificate program in Reproductive Psychology are the first of their kind. I study mothers' development holistically, both their thriving and distress, and offer an empowering, strengths-based approach to normalize the transition to motherhood. I am in private practice and consult with women of all ages as well as professionals working to improve the wellbeing of mothers.
“In my expanded definition, the process of becoming a mother or matrescence, the term first coined by Dana Raphael, Ph.D. (1973) and which I later built upon, is a developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond. The exact length of matrescence is individual, recurs with each child, and may arguably last a lifetime! The scope of the changes encompasses multiple domains --bio-psycho-social-political-spiritual-- and can be likened to the developmental push of adolescence. Increased attention to mothers has spurred new findings, from neuroscience to economics, and supports the rationale for a new field of study known as matrescence. Such an arena would allow the roundtable of specialists to come together and advance our understanding of this life passage.”
Athan, Aurelie. “Matrescence: the emerging mother.” Medium, March 8, 2019, https://medium.com/@ama81/matrescence-the-emerging-mother-69d1699ff0cc
“while interviewing new mothers about their daily experiences, they had noticeable difficulty articulating the magnitude of this life-altering transition.”
Assler-Alvey, Robin (artist) https://www.robinassner-alvey.com
I follow this photographer/artist on Instagram and am enthralled by her use of her own body (particularly in her “Motherhood”, “All Touched Out,” and “Untitled (Image Transfers)” series), transformed and yet more a more “real” depiction of herself in some ways and how she feels after long days of mothering. I see this as a departure point for alternative self-portraits, as well as inspiration for building a whole from fragments and disjointed pieces.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas, Penguin Classics, 2014.
recommended by previous mentor, Chris Dorosz. Partially read; love the ideas, but it’s a bit dense. Continue reading and see if it influences my perspective on taking up space in the backyard.
Barrera, Jazmina. Linea Negra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes. (book) Translated by Christina MacSweeney, Two Lines Press, 2022.
I came across this during research while I was pregnant, and read it primarily during delirious middle-of-the-night pumping sessions after having Nova. The style is spare, fragmented, and completely fitting with the experiences of pregnancy and new parenting, which is what Barrera is also capturing, while weaving in the fascinating art history and legacy of a little-known artists’ model and artist in Mexico.
Buteyn, Kaylan. The Artist Mother Podcast https://artistmotherpodcast.com & Artist Caregiver Network. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artistmotherpodcast
The Artist Mother IG account has been an inspiration to me since before I even had a child. They introduced me to so many incredible artists. I recently discovered their Thrive Together Network and am considering joining this online source for collaboration and community between artist-caregivers for inspiration and support with others in similar situations, learning how to thrive as artists with limited time, attention, and resources.
Carpenter, Tara, et al. (Heidi Moller Somsen and Kaylan Buteyn), editors. An Artist and a Mother. (essays) Demeter Press, 2023.
amazing, so needed (for me, and I imagine, others). Individual artists from the Artist Mother Network share stories about their artistic journeys and how they coexist with their parenting experiences and responsibilities.
Chinchilla Moreno, Izaskun, “Eco-Friendly Pop-up Architecture,” (course) Domestika, domestika.org
After ten years of participating in lots of competitions (I won more than 30 awards), the financial crisis hit - about the same time I became a mother. I finally decided to take a proactive role in the construction of my own projects.
projects that are short-term, low-budget, freshly made, fast, sometimes temporary
her book - “The Caring City” - ecologically and socially conscious; designers taking back the city
find people that can help us materialize our thinking
design and build with recycled and hacked products
Delgado, Elizabeth (healing justice practitioner, community organizer, and wellbeing strategist). Colectiva Wellness & Healing https://colectivawellbeing.com/.
Attended Elizabeth’s Community Call focused on Ancestral Healing, hosted by Rockwood Leadership Institute, November 30, 2023.
Guided meditations deepened connections to specific ancestors and inherited resilience strategies.
“Elizabeth identifies as a Taino-Borikua, queer, disabled, neurodivergent human whose life purpose is creating healing justice spaces and teaching effective wellness and resilience practices for the empowerment of those experiencing stress and systemic oppression. Whether in the workplace, community or individual setting.”
Englund, Pam. Birthing from Within (revised). Partera Press, 2010.
powerful source for translating the emotional and physical transition of birth into artmaking as a means of processing.
Goldsworthy, Andy. (artist) https://andygoldsworthystudio.com
Lubow, Arthur. “36 Who Made a Difference: Andy Goldsworthy” (article) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/35-who-made-a-difference-andy-goldsworthy-114067437/ November 2005
environmental art; nests; temporal art
Hahn, Thich Nhat. You are Here: Discovering the magic of the present moment. 2001. Translated by Sherab Chodzin Hohn, Shambhala Publications, 2009.
source of inspiration and experiential research for me, as I’ve realized that meditation and presence is such an important part of what I’m working on and creating.
Hattam, Nasim. (senior journalist, BBC) “Matrescence: The birth of a mother.” (video; 05:17) August 2023 - Rituals, traditions and the reality of early motherhood around the world.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/matrescence-the-birth-of-a-mother/vi-AA1fItnH
The word “matrescence” was first coined by American medical anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 (who also popularized the term “doula”). It describes the physical, psychological, and emotional changes of becoming a mother, “and has been largely unexplored in the medical community.”
“our society is failing new mothers” (Lucy Jones)
Hayhoe, Katherine. Saving Us: A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world. Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2021.
I read this in 2021 and it catalyzed my commitment to weaving climate awareness into all of my artmaking as much as possible. Hayhoe makes the case that the majority of people DO care, but alarmism about climate change often causes overwhelm that leads to shutting down and turning away from the issue because it feels too big to solve. Her research shows that one thing that everyone can do to help is to share conversations about the changing climate – through whatever means they have, to connect through whatever others care about. I realized that I am an artist, and I can start conversations from that place.
Hersey, Tricia. Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Little Brown Spark, 2022
This book is critical in reframing the power of rest. Refusing to engage in systems of capitalism, grind culture, and white supremacy by slowing down, resting, relaxing. I was intrigued to find out that Hersey (a theologian and founder of The Nap Ministry) is also a performance artist. Her work speaks to rest as a spiritual solution to grief, an approach to healing that is both simple and revolutionary.
Heti, Sheila. Motherhood. Picador, 2019.
Carolyn suggested this during mentorship, and I found it profound in wrestling with the monumental shifts in thinking around parenting before even having a child (or possibly never having a child). It solidified for me the importance of the interior transformation.
Jones, Lucy. Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. Penguin, 2023
Excited to track the publication of this new book! My understanding is that it is a research text on the evolution of the study of matrescence as well as the author’s personal experiences. Unfortunately it just came out and is currently only available in the UK; I pre-ordered a copy and the US version ships May 2024.
Update: listening to the audiobook (August-October 2024) and it is incredibly beautiful, fascinating, and vital source of information and resonance with my personal experiences as well as my zones of inquiry for this project.
Keenan, Annabel “Whose Mother is Nature, Anyway?” (article) Hyperallergic, November 2022. https://hyperallergic.com/782324/im-not-your-mother-ppow-gallery
Contextualizes the idea of “mother nature” as comparative to actual mothers; both are sucked dry, depleted, and left exhausted and burnt out.
“Motherhood, like nature, is not an endless resource. They are, however, both renewable if given the chance to regenerate and restore.”
“I’m Not Your Mother” (group exhibition), PPOW Gallery, October 28-December 2, 2022. https://www.ppowgallery.com/exhibitions/im-not-your-mother#tab:thumbnails;tab-1:slideshow
P·P·O·W is pleased to present I’m Not Your Mother, a group exhibition bringing together early landscapes by Carolee Schneemann with contemporary artists whose compositions reject misogynistic and romanticized depictions of nature and grapple honestly with the realities of our natural world today. Including works by Grace Carney, Jasper Francis Cropsey, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jacci Den Hartog, Brook Hsu, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Daniel Correa Mejía, Nohemí Pérez, Mira Schor, TARWUK, and Robin F. Williams, I’m Not Your Mother questions how we define motherhood and its damaging consequences for bodies both feminized and ecological.
Knott, Sarah. Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History. Sarah Crichton Books, 2019.
both a history of maternity (pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood) and a memoir. “As a memoir, Mother Is a Verb becomes a method of asking new questions and probing lost pasts in order to historicize the smallest, even the most mundane of human experiences. Is there a history to interruption, to the sound of an infant’s cry, to sleeplessness? Knott finds answers not through the telling of grand narratives, but through the painstaking accumulation of a trellis of anecdotes. And all the while, we can feel the child on her hip.”
Lamott, Anne. Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. Anchor, 2005.
This book has been an inspiration to me for years; a funny and brilliant transformation of the hardships of early parenting into art and inspiration for others. Also a reminder to bring some levity and joy to the art!
Love, Jena. (Artist) “The Absurdity of Pregnancy and Motherhood” series. https://www.jenahlove.com/absurdity
takes an unflinching stance at documenting the dull and repetitive realities of motherhood (like photographing every dirty diaper for a year), with a beautiful sarcastic humor and wit
May, Katherine. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Riverhead Books, 2020.
Philosophically aligned with the concept rest as a literal and metaphorical retreat from “normal” life during times of difficulty and/or transition.
McCahon, Nikki. The Dear Mama Podcast, “Healing the Mother Wound with Bethany Webster,” S1:E29 (46:54), 20 April 2020. https://www.nikkimccahon.com/
Episode description: Bethany is a writer, transformational coach and international speaker. Her work has filled a crucial gap in our understanding of women’s lives by blending cutting-edge research on intergenerational trauma, feminist theory, and psychology to comprehensively define the Mother Wound.
McCahon, Nikki. Discovering Matrescence. (eBook) Dear Mama Pty Ltd, 2019-2022.
“Becoming a mother leaves no woman as it found her; it unravels her and rebuilds her; it cracks her open; it takes her to her edges. It’s both beautiful and brutal, often at the same time.“
Odell, Jenny. How to do Nothing. Melville House, 2020.
- Rest; bioregionalism; community and connection. So inspirational! Feels very pertinent to the work.
Raphael, Dana. "Matrescence, Becoming a Mother, A “New/Old” Rite de Passage". Being Female: Reproduction, Power, and Change, edited by Dana Raphael, De Gruyter Mouton, 1975, pp. 65-72. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110813128.65
Looking for the original source of the term “matrescence”; I can’t read the full excerpt here but will keep looking.
Sacks, Alexandra. “A new way to think about motherhood.” TED talk. May 2018. (06:17)
https://www.ted.com/talks/alexandra_sacks_a_new_way_to_think_about_the_transition_to_motherhood
people don’t have the framework for what is “normal” and a lot of the ambivalence and hardships of early parenthood are confused for a more serious condition: postpartum depression.
when a baby is born, so is a mother; each unsteady in their own way.
Simmons, Jeanne K. (artist) https://jeanneksimmons.com/projects
land art; photography; environmental art; body and fields; woven grass
besides being beautiful and conceptually important art, Simmons is a reminder to me of the prevalence of the female body in especially performance art, which is conceptually a form dedicated to the ephemeral (inherently associated with time and loss) - ie Yoko Ono, “Cut Piece”
Union of Concerned Scientists, “What is Climate Resilience?” (article) 6 June 2022, https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/what-climate-resilience
“Climate resilience is about successfully coping with and managing the impacts of climate change while preventing those impacts from growing worse.”
Weller, Francis. The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of renewal and the sacred work of grief. North Atlantic Books, 2015.
recommended to me by a friend; still reading it. The work I’m making is so much about grief and healing, and so far this book is very relevant to connecting personal grief and healing with grief over the destruction of the climate and how to find collective emotional healing.
Matrescence: An artist giving birth to herself
Alexia Casiano
May 2024
all images courtesy of the artist
I only learned about the word “matrescence” a few years ago. I had already been working deeply with themes of children, the inner child, intergenerational legacies, hope and survival on a changing planet – my interest in such themes sparked not only by my own desire to be a parent, but my background in psychology, nannying, and postpartum doula work with new parents and families.
Matrescence, I read, was the process of becoming a mother [or a parent; gender identity and parenthood, especially for a birthing parent, can be complicated and that’s an essay for another day] – a developmental life stage akin to adolescence, but lasting much longer (arguably, much of one’s life). Here was a word, I thought, for what I was already going through: not yet pregnant, but dreaming of family, I was in the beginning stages of matrescence. Some people, perhaps, start this journey only once discovering they are pregnant, or don’t want to be, or have lost a child; how many different ways can one experience transition around the wild, incalculable change that is the possibility of carrying a new life into this world – or not?
I learned that this term was first coined in 1973 by Dana Raphael, Ph.D., a medical anthropologist, to describe the development process that has existed since the dawn of time, but had never before been named or studied. Around 2016, Dr. Aurelie Athen picked up the mantle of research on matrescence, teaching courses in it at Columbia University. Others followed, with TED talks, articles, research, and more. In 2023, Lucy Jones, a British journalist and writer, published the first book titled “Matrescence”. I stumbled upon the book announcement on Instagram, staring in awe at the cover illustration, which mirrored so closely the drawings and paintings I had done early in my own pregnancy in 2022. What is it about pregnancy and becoming a parent that elicits this feeling: circles overlapping, morphing, shifting in and out of one another?
Where does one end and another begin? Is a pregnant person one person, or two people?
In January of 2022, I discovered I was pregnant just as I settled into my MFA program, all while working full-time. I was terrified, and exhausted. I was inspired, and curious, and excited to push forward and see what would come of this new – dual – adventure. I had no idea if I could even make it work, but I knew I had to try; for myself, and to set an example for my daughter. And I knew right away that the focus of my work during my MFA would be matrescence.
I wasn’t sure what my limitations as an artist might be when I realized I was too nauseated sometimes to even get out of bed, so I set the goal for myself while pregnant to write at least one short prose poem every day. During this time of gestation, I also began weaving nests out of cardboard and discarded materials (like the string from maternity clothing tags, and the silver foil from protein bars and ginger candy wrappers). I made nests of clothing, bedsheets, amassed baby items. I discovered that pregnancy brought on excessive congestion for me (as in many pregnant people), and went through inordinate amounts of tissues, so I made nests out of those, too. I made self-portraits for the first time, capturing elements of my experience as my body changed and grew, and I contemplated what it meant to nest, prepare, and rest. I started to consider the nests in nature, and to bring my creations into the outdoors, where I watched them slowly decomposing back into the soil, grasses, and leaves around them.
Why did my pregnant — and postpartum — body, draw me back to nature?
Matrescence is a universal process, and yet every single experience is unique. My personal experience of pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenting was painful, traumatic, and difficult – even horrifying to me. At the same time, it provided me with exactly what I had longed for for so many years, and so much joy, peace, and love. Time unfolded slowly and yet with great speed; emotions became more vast and varied than anything I thought I could contain. I was (and am) more exhausted than I ever thought possible.
Is the earth really our “mother” – and what has the earth had to endure to bear and sustain humanity?
Over time, I realized how much there is to grieve and heal during the process of matrescence, even if everything goes “right.” To become a parent is to split oneself in two (sometimes quite literally); it means losing the life you had, and becoming someone entirely new — even as you contain the same person you once were, like a seed that might sprout again one day. Meanwhile, a strange, fragile species is growing in your place.
How could I capture this monumental transformation, this transition, this transfiguration?
I began to notice time in a new way. I wanted to find a way to work with nature, instead of trying to fight against it. In my first year postpartum, I allowed observation itself to become a large part of my art practice: observing the seasons change; embedding myself deeply in the land and space around me; watching materials exposed to the elements over time. I let my lawn grow wild, braiding the grasses, building little nests as time went on; lying on the ground and watching the bees and mushrooms and moss in the undergrowth, and looking up at the trees and the sky from a different vantage point.
When do mothers – and when does the earth – get a chance to rest, to grieve, to heal? How do we return to ourselves? Are we the same, or something entirely new?
The project “Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature” is a temporal sculptural installation situated as an open-air dwelling in my backyard that hopes to provide spiritual, if not literal, answers to some of these questions. It is a technical expression of multiple materials, particularly those that are recycled and reclaimed, such as cardboard, paper pulp, wood, and plastic trash, as I contemplate the interaction of human detritus and the environment, and the future we are creating for the next generation.
Moreover, it is an invitation for others to confront their own matrescence – whatever stage they might be in – or parallel transitions in their lives, and what kind of space, time, grief, joy, and healing they may need in this moment.
The final installation opening will be held Saturday, November 16, 2024 (or by appointment) in Kirkland, WA. Please contact alexiamakesart@gmail.com for more information and to RSVP. You can follow Alexia’s progress on Instagram @lexialoo and sign up for updates at www.alexiacameron.com/matrescence.
Project Notes (9/18/24)
What is a trans-ition? A
trans(form)ation? A
trans(figure)ation?
Form
Figure
I am not the same anymore
Time has changed
E V E R Y T H
I N G
and still will fade
and grow.
What have we born(e)?
What do we bear?
How do we bear it?
The pleasure and the pain
Sacred bodies (containing
all pleasure and pain)
Something important has happened
here.
Come, build yourself
a dwelling
place of ashes and bones
sit with me
bear witness
bear the fruits of change
hold yourself as your heart crumbles
to dust and is reborn again
Something important
has happened here
Mark it with
a dwelling
space
Watch it as the grass grows
Build yourself a dwelling place. Sit,
bear witness. Something important
has happened here.
I am not the same as I once was
What happened?
Who am I
Now
I am the roots and the sorrow,
the grass and the clouds passing by.
I am the newborn, the mother, the wind
and rain and sun
I am the grass grown tall, and the braid,
I am the father and the son
The mushroom caps and baby snail
the soft moss holding it all
and the constant sigh.
Am I nothing at all? Or everything
I used to be
the branches swaying in the winds but now
I am the trunk, everlasting,
sturdy and tall.
reverb: transfiguration
The following is a response to the passage of scripture (“Reverb”) for Transfiguration Sunday that I read to my spiritual community, Church of the Apostles (COTA) at the Fremont Abbey in Seattle, on 2/11/24. COTA is a joint Lutheran/Episcopalian ministry by and for the community, is an open & affirming congregation for LGBTQ+ people, and a collaborative and creative congregation. (See below for notes and references.)
Mark 9:2-9
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"
9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Transfiguration Sunday: A Reverb
I am building a dwelling.
Literally. In my yard, I am building a dwelling.
–
I looked up “transfiguration”, and it’s a change in form or appearance; an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.
What does “spiritual” even mean? What is spirit? What makes a transition or change a spiritual one?
I think the spirit is where the heavens meet the earth; the mountain. Where the human meets the divine. where the veil grows thin. Where we sense our connection to all things; to god, the universe, to divine love and freedom; where we can face our terror and still be safe, to know that we are okay.
This is where we are called to stay. “Listen,” the voice says. Listen. This is what we need to hear, yet cannot fully understand; this is what we need to see, yet cannot hold onto. It is ephemeral, mysterious, wild, incalculable, brave, bold, free; this is where we can let go, and be held by the mystery that is divine presence.
–
A spiritual change can happen anywhere, any time, to anyone. A spiritual transition could be a pregnancy, a birth, a new job, a new school, following a dream, climbing a mountain, running a marathon, allowing a new relationship into your life, being vulnerable with yourself or others, creating art, making music, connecting with others, sharing a secret, forging a new path, writing a book, going for a walk and noticing the cracks in the pavement or a flower swaying in the wind. It is mystery, it is noticing. It is listening. It is a moment, and it is a lifetime.
This is the transfiguration: around us, and within us, and between us. Threes. The place where monsters merge with angels, and our wildest imaginings are real, and holy, and given as gifts of magic.
Is the transfiguration of Jesus something that occurred only to Jesus, or to Peter and the disciples? Did god herself experience this moment? Is it about one or both or all of them? Yes. It is about everything being true at once: Moses and Elijah and Jesus, both here with us, and not here. It is about a journey, there and back. What do we do with this overwhelming gift of experiencing the mystery, terror, and awe of a transfiguration – in ourselves or others?
We build a dwelling for it, in our hearts, in our minds, on paper, or in our own backyard. On the mountain where it happened, or in whatever space we have for contemplation and care. To share with others, and to sit alone in silence. We contemplate the mysteries of birth, death, rebirth; the temporal and ephemeral; the metamorphosis; we honor the transition that harkens back to our baptism and presages the resurrection. We dwell here, now.
–
Peter witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus; a complete spiritual transformation, an apocryphal, beautiful, incomprehensible, and ephemeral metamorphosis; and he was terrified. But he didn’t run away. He said Rabbi, it is good to be here. Let us make three dwellings: one for you, one for moses, and one for elijah.
Always in threes, right? the father, son, and holy ghost; jesus, moses, and elijah; the baptism, the transfiguration, and the crucifixion. There’s this sacred and mysterious balance in the number three, and it shows up a lot in nature, and in principles of artmaking, too.
Some of you may know that I am currently working on an MFA; a master’s degree in fine art, in interdisciplinary art and writing.
This process, for me, of going back to school, of being able to connect with others who share my passion for art and creativity and community, is absolutely transformative for me. And it is a spiritual change, because it is so vulnerable, and so raw, and so real. It requires me to show up as my full self, and it changes me in ways I can’t fully understand. And art, for me – all arts–are mysterious to me, because of this.
And at the same time as I started grad school, I became a parent for the first time, and I experienced birthing a child, and everything – literally everything about my life, my identity, my body, my brain, my social interactions, my spirit and my spiritual life has changed.
As I enter into my final year of my MFA program, I am starting work on my final project, which is called “Matrescence: becoming mother nature.” It’s an installation project that I’m building outdoors, out of mostly recycled materials like cardboard, and I’ll document the creation and deterioration of it over the course of this year. And it starts with building a frame – the outline of a structure, open to the elements, literally holding space for myself and creating a space of rest and contemplation.
This thing that I’m building, it’s about reckoning with birth, change, transition, metamorphosis, transformation (which ALL of us go through, at one time or another, or many times over), and it’s about rest. Bearing witness to something extraordinary, and yes, even terrifying, and taking the time to pause and dwell in it.
And in that rest, something else happens, too – a letting go. A trust that god, who is mother nature, will take care of us. And it's a caring for her, too: to stay present, to witness, and to honor the sacrifices of god, and the earth. We are able to be still, perhaps, for a little while, to mark these seismic, spiritual moments of change, in this specific time and place.
So I am making a dwelling. In my yard.
–
I was grateful to be reminded by a classmate recently of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, wherein people build a Sukkah, a temporary shelter made of natural materials, to “dwell” in for a week of celebrations. This is to commemorate the time god provided for the Israelites in the wilderness after they were freed from slavery, and it is a symbolic structure that celebrates “the fragility and transience of life, and one’s dependence on god” (to quote from Wikipedia). What I am building, she said, is in many ways similar to a Sukkah: a temporary dwelling, a symbolic ritual. The Sukkah is also a place of spiritual mystery, and of celebration and sharing space with others. (My childhood best friend is Jewish, and I remember her inviting me into her family’s Sukkah in their yard.)
–
As many of us have, I have experienced a transfiguration of my body, and my life, and I am so grateful to spirit for providing for me and leading me through this wilderness. And in response, I get to transfigure this space that I have been given, and share it with others.
–
And this beautiful thing that I envision is not going to last forever. Thinking and working in this medium where time and nature are integral elements has allowed me to embrace deterioration and death as a part of life and art; for everything new, there is also a letting go of the old. I create to mark these times of transformation, and then before my eyes, my creations vanish. And now I’m thinking of what happens in this passage – Moses and elijah disappear again, (jesus presumably goes back to not shining with light,) but god’s voice comes in, and says, “Listen.” Something important has happened, will happen, is happening.
–
I am drawn to the mystery of the transfiguration of jesus, and to mystery in general. When I follow the mystery of life, nature, god, self, community; when I listen and respond to that call; I see amazing things happen. I feel peace. I feel terror and awe. I feel joy.
I have to tell you, I was terrified to do this, to stand up here and speak. I told this to a friend of mine and she basically said, if god is with me, then what do I have to be scared of? …I don’t know! To be terrified is human. To be terrified, and to show up and do it anyway – that is where the human meets the divine. That is the mystery, and that is how we are transfigured.
As we celebrate this festival of the transfiguration, I invite you to think about what moments of awe and wonder, or maybe even something that terrifies you, that you feel moved to sit with in your life lately. Is there a way, figuratively or maybe even literally, physically, to mark out space to sit with it? A way to set up camp and stay there a while? As Peter says, “it is good for us to be here.” Together.
***
–Alexia Casiano, Seattle, 2/11/24
References:
***
/tran(t)sˌfiɡyəˈrāSH(ə)n/
noun
a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state:
"in this light the junk undergoes a transfiguration; it shines"
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkah
A sukkah or succah (/ˈsʊkə/; Hebrew: סוכה [suˈka]; plural, סוכות [suˈkot] sukkot or sukkos or sukkoth, often translated as "booth") is a temporary hut constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. It is topped with branches and often well decorated with autumnal, harvest or Judaic themes. The book of Vayikra (Leviticus) describes it as a symbolic wilderness shelter, commemorating the time God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness they inhabited after they were freed from slavery in Egypt.[1] It is common for Jews to eat, sleep and otherwise spend time in the sukkah. In Judaism, Sukkot is considered a joyous occasion and is referred to in Hebrew as Z'man Simchateinu (the time of our rejoicing), and the sukkah itself symbolizes the fragility and transience of life and one's dependence on God.[2]
How organizations are like art projects
String installation, 2023
First published on LinkedIn, August 26, 2024
As a professional in building organizational structure, operations, and effective mission-driven workplaces who also happens to be an artist, I think a lot about why I am drawn to these two seemingly disparate fields. How are nonprofits, philanthropy, and workplaces similar to art pieces? Why does analyzing, streamlining, organizing, and optimizing an organization feel so much like drawing, sculpting, or painting to me?
Organization-building is like building anything else: you start with a "container," a vision, and an end goal.
The concept of a container, for an artist, is simply the set of constraints that you choose (or that have chosen you) to work within. This could be a canvas of a particular size and shape; a space in which you plan to erect a sculpture; the average length of a song or a play.
An organization is a container, in the sense that it has a reasonably pre-defined structure: a group of people working together to achieve or create something.
This can be further defined by the type of organization (nonprofit? business? government office?), which is determined by the general goal or mission such as producing a product, solving a problem, or providing a service. This then starts to give shape to the prospective size of the organization in number of staff members, constituents or clients, buildings and equipment needed... which in turn starts to paint a financial picture of the necessary (and ideal) budget, leading to fundraising and financing options, financial planning, and managing financial risk and potential.
At this point, as an artist, your drawing is starting to take shape (or your installation, sculpture, book, etc.). You have determined the container you are working with - the medium, size, scope. You have an idea of the general timeframe it might take to complete this project. You know what resources you already have, and what you will need. You have a sense of a budget, know how you will go about the work, and if you will need or want assistance.
These are all logistics, which my organizational brain happily nerds out on. Just as important, if not more so, is the vision - whether you are an artist or business person, philanthropist or nonprofit leader, at this point you certainly have big dreams about what is possible. What will this become? What will it look like? How will you know you've achieved your goal(s)?
As an artist, we often hold the end goal completely invisible to the rest of the world, or make sketches and models of what we dream the end result will be. Organizations draft their mission, mission, vision, and brand or identity.
Then, we get down to work.
In organizational development, the real fun begins: we get to develop programs, departments, staffing plans, job descriptions. We recruit boards, and build websites. Internally, there are organizational charts, workflow charts, spreadsheets and checklists, calendars and project management tools; feedback, analysis, research, and iterative process improvements that the public will never see, but are just as important as the armature (internal skeleton or frame) below the layers of materials that get built up into a sculpture.
The art pieces is building up, layer upon layer. Lines get added, sometimes swiftly and boldly, sometimes lightly and dreamily, then erased, moved, changed. We need to take breaks, step back, consider the big picture - yet each minute detail also matters. There is always forward momentum, however stagnant it feels, because each new mark, layer, or draft builds upon what came before.
A work of art is often thought of as a static object, but is in fact alive, grown out of a process as organic yet organized as any group of people working together to achieve anything. This is why I love art, and organizations: they can be shaped, sculpted, created, and changed, but they are never truly in our control. They are like living things: we hold them lightly, and tend to them with attention and care, and wish for them to have an effect on the world that we may not even live to see. Yet we keep showing up and creating/re-creating them, because we are human.
Grief, Ghosts, Lamentations
“I always recommend writing an essay,” Carolyn[1] says. A good practice at any stage of life.
I can’t seem to write, though; I can’t even focus, my heartbeat feels too big in my chest, my brain wants to shut down.
I need rest.
Why is rest resistance, Tricia Hersey?[2] Because we are expected to work. What if we are resisting ourselves, our own (art) work? Rest is resistance. I refuse to focus. I choose rest. I don’t know if I’m joining the revolution or running away from myself.
I know I need a nap. Several naps. A trip to the Korean spa; a long massage; a steam bath and tears.
I need to touch the earth and stare at the sky. This is why I am still – in my head if not with my hands right now – building a dwelling.
Tom[3] says that the original meaning of to “dwell” was to tend to the land - to garden. What is a tending-to? What can we attend to?
I am not without form or function. I am still me. Am I?
I can still notice, even in my suppressed state that wants nothing but to stay indoors, in bed, under blankets, in ignorance and in my middle-class (both exploited and exploiter) comforts. I can still notice the tang of autumn in the air, the cold that seeps into my toes. I can still see the mold blooming delicately across the paintings left out in the dewy yard. I feel oddly comforted by the decay, the ritual loss of letting go, giving over to nature. I see what changes, day to day, and what stays the same: the posts, the earth, the grass growing and glowing green this time of year. Abundance and decay. The modern calendar has just turned over to October. Spiders are filling the yard again. The new wooden pallet walls fit right in: makeshift, elegantly reclaimed, splintering yet sturdy enough for one more winter at least. Temporary, joining us while we are here.
We are here. In this space, in this place and time. This is what has happened in the last month: my brother died. My sweet, funny, kind, musically talented, generous, hardworking, loving, and loved brother, the youngest of the six of us, ended his life after a difficult battle with a horrible mental illness. It grew and took over his brain, perhaps for many years, proliferating over the last two, growing lethal over the last few months. He was not himself, in the end, even though his amused chuckle and dry, absurdist sense of humor still bubbled to the surface now and then.
One day he was here, and then he was gone. The world stopped that day, but of course it did not stop. I got on a plane. I held my family and cried. I felt guilt, grief, anger, loneliness, longing, and pain. I felt regret and relief, fear and confusion. I felt numb. I still feel numb.
What does this have to do with “Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature”? Everything, it turns out. I have been building a dwelling space, literally and metaphorically, to hold monumental grief, change, life, and death. It is simple, but not easy. I have been trying to learn what the Earth has to teach me, in letting go of our very human existential crises and giving in to the ebbs and flows of time. It has taken me so long to get to where I am today, and I’m still not finished. And now I look out into the backyard and see it taking shape: the beams, the roof, the walls, the hands that will hold up the weeping sky coming through, and I know that it’s exactly where I am supposed to be. Even though every part of me wants nothing more than to hide inside, forget about Sam, the Earth, the sky, the songs, the rhythm, the laughter of babies and toddlers and kids, the pain and awe that consumed me as I painted the words, “I had a baby and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” What if that baby dies before me, one day? It will still be (and perhaps even more so?) true.
The truest thing we can ever face is ourselves. Who am I, now? How can we be here, alone, yet together? Myself and my child; myself and my brother; myself and my grandmother, also dead from the same illness, before I was born. We are woven together, held by nature and time: generations, laughing and dying, birthing and being reborn, painting and drumming, singing and dancing and loving and living and living on. Am I one person, or two, or more?
Mariam-Saba[4] once told me during a spiritual healing session that my grief is being poured back into the ocean of grief, and god holds it all. I am swimming in grief, being scooped up and held and poured back into myself by the hands of my creator. All grief is love. All love is grief.
When I had my child I was split in two. My body was torn, my mind was torn, my spirit was wounded, my womb was a wound the size of a dinner plate. All of this is considered normal (yet up to 50% of birthing parents experience birth as a traumatic incident [5]). I am still learning how to heal, how to hold my infant self, and my own daughter - a new consciousness I am responsible for, but cannot control. I am broken, and also more whole than when I started. I am a full circle: my grandmother, my mother, my daughter, and me.
My brother joins my (biological) father in the afterlife, with my maternal grandmother – my three ghosts, looking out for me, looking over my shoulder, sitting with me as I dwell in this temporary, temporal, grief-stricken place. This healthy, normal, healing place. This body, which is tasked with holding all pleasure and all pain simultaneously. My ghosts dance around me, but they are not me. My mother and my daughter are with me, but they are not me.
What is this “me”? Can I be the Earth now, please? Can I softly slip away into stillness, silence, as the human world zooms past on their fast cars, the freeway so close and yet so far away - just over the wall behind my backyard. The trees that create the high crown around me have grown up over decades, maybe centuries, further towards the sky than I am from the freeway. The sound drenches me in buzzing and chaos that churns like a river night and day. Where are we, wherever we are – where is “here”? Whose land is this? Are we alone, or together?
This is not how I hoped this year would go. I wrote about grief and healing, trauma and presence, yet somehow I never imagined I would need it this much: time and space. A healing, made from mud. A project created with and from community, those that are aware of it and those that aren’t – everyone who connects me to the physical crafts, nature, place, ideas, and identities that have brought me here. A re-weaving. Something new, made from old things. I am still here, but I am not the same. Nothing that changes can ever be un-changed; nothing that changes us can ever go back again.
***
What is an essay? My parents are English teachers, so I know this one. The simplest form of an essay has an introduction, a thesis sentence, three paragraphs supporting the thesis, and a conclusion paragraph.
A thesis and supporting ideas: what is my thesis?
My project thesis is not a statement to be defended. It is a series of questions that are just out of reach (represented, perhaps, by the long trailing fingers on open hands, splaying open palms to the sky – supporting the literal and metaphorical weight of roof beams, yet open-ended, waiting for a bird, or a fleeting thought, to alight).
If I had to write the thesis (a statement), maybe it would be this:
Birth is a shocking experience, for the birthing and the birthed. We spend our whole lives trying to process the significance of this, because time and environment are constantly shifting such that we cannot fully grasp the ephemeral significance of change. The best we can do is experience God (all pleasure and pain) in a single moment; the way to do that is to sit, rest, be still, and notice: the fear, horror, trash, art, joy, growth, beauty, grief of a single moment in space and time.
or this:
Mother and Earth need to rest.
or:
All mothers and all children experience pain. There is comfort in acknowledging all the pain and trauma in a space made sacred by attention and intention. We can be both things – all things – at once.
Maybe my thesis is this:
We are changing, we are changed; whatever has changed us has taken as much as it has given. We can acknowledge the growth and the pain. We can heal. To learn how to heal, we can watch the earth growing, dying, and simply existing. It is a marvel and a wonder to live.
Or maybe this:
Can nature teach us how to live, to die, to heal?
But that is no longer a statement.
I love art because it’s more question than answer. I cannot prove anything; I can only hold up artistic truths to the question, to see if they fit.
***
What have I learned so far? I have stretched myself to build, when my body is weak. I learned I need help, community, support, that I cannot do this alone, no matter how badly my ego wants me to be able to.
I stretched myself to go outside more, to work in all weather, to confront nature and sit with the reality of rain, heat, dirt, bugs, bees, mold, slime, wind, rot, wild animals, cold, damp – even the sounds in the air, which are mostly human-made (traffic, airplanes), but outside I have less control over what reaches me. I learned that I am not as interested in this as I thought I might be. It is still very difficult for me to dress correctly, overcome the limitations of my physical body (chronic fatigue syndrome; fibromyalgia; and a tendency towards poor temperature regulation — a condition called Reynaud’s that causes a disproportionate cold in my toes, fingers, ears, and nose). I learned it is not so easy to overcome my human condition.
I have learned that maybe humans, at least some of us, weren’t meant to live in nature. How sad. I feel like an outcast, unfit to live the life my “mother” lives with ease – how fitting, this alienation, as a metaphor for the new generations trying to make their way in a digital age.
Yet I also learned that by challenging my assumption that art stays indoors (or at the very least is engineered to resist the elements), I have mentally broken down of the walls between human and nature -- a breaking down of the belief that we can keep things safe, protected, clean, dry, controlled. A dissolution of the belief that we can last forever.
***
This semester happened to start with an assignment to read Judy Grahn’s Hanging on Our Own Bones, which turned out to be a collection of poems described as “contemporary lamentations.” She writes of what she knows of the history of lamentations: a spectacle of grief, traditionally performed by widows and women, in Italy and the Mediterranean area of Europe. A wailing, singing, rending of clothing, scratching of faces, but also a commentary on social ills such as war that had taken loved ones away. Grahn writes: “A lamentation, then, pours out of a poet’s heart not only from a deep sense of loss, but also of outrage and justice needed or denied; it takes its own time exploring the emotions and implications, and aims at the possibility of transformation, both individual and collective…”
I thought to myself, oh my god. This is what I have to create, now. A new lamentation, for Sam, for mental illness and healing, for the injustice of systems that failed him, and for the grief of the possibility that nothing that could ever have saved him. For the emptiness that is the space in the middle of all this loss, the calm quiet place that is just trying to make sense of the new world I live in.
As I research the materials to craft my outdoor sculptures – ones that will help keep form and shape for such a time as to sit with them, yet allow nature to take them over in its right time – I am struck by how unfathomable this goal is to our collective industrial identity.
There are products for sealing things “permanently” and protecting them outdoors, but they are made of acrylic (plastic) and all plastics, no matter how much we pretend otherwise, are slowly breaking down and microplastics now permeate the soil, seas, rain, food, and our very bodies[6]. There are “nontoxic” sealants (that won’t poison your kids or your pets) but that aren’t environmentally friendly, and even those are more likely to need to be reapplied on a regular basis to ensure “protection” for your projects from the sun, wind, and rain.
What they don’t say is that nothing can protect us (or our projects, products, or progeny) from time itself.
Nothing is permanent. Nothing lasts forever. Some things barely even exist before they disappear, leaving only memories, legacies (for better or worse), and a psychic imprint behind.
Life is the ultimate performance art: we are here, we make choices, and we leave again.
Is it even art, if it can’t be held onto? I remember being shocked and mildly appalled at first learning about the idea of performance art as art. How can you say that a moment in time is the art itself? What if it was just as deserving of hanging in a museum for hundreds of years as any 18th-century oil painting? How could it just be…gone?
What if the intentional letting go of something is what activates grief and meaning in the heart of the viewer (and the artist)?
A contemporary lamentation. ■
[1] Carolyn Cooke is a writer and professor at CIIS, and my MFA project advisor. http://www.carolyncooke.com
[2] Hersey, Tricia. Rest Is Resistance, New York : Little, Brown Spark, 2022.
[3] Thomas Kerr is a writer and fellow interdisciplinary art MFA candidate at CIIS.
[4] Mariam-Saba Ahmad is a friend, artist, teacher, and spiritual healer. https://www.mariam-saba.com
[5] Jones, Lucy. Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, New York : Pantheon Books, 2003.
[6] Balch, Bridget. “Microplastics are inside us all. What does that mean for our health?”, Association of American Medical Colleges, 27 June, 2024. Retrieved 16 October, 2024.