the abyss of the other
\\ leaps this was supposed to be a work on milk how to look at the freedom of a child bothers the child gets under the table i thought it would be easy i remember the very first time i hit the road my child is an abyss an atlantic leap
\\\ leaks this could be a manifest
1st leap this was supposed to be a work on milk on milk as a tongue as a mother tongue as language - i noticed that the less my daughter nurses the more she talks or the more she talks the less she demands my breasts and now here i am trying to understand what art is with a child lying in my arms and also what is the limit of a colonized body that nourishes while it is also destroyed here in amsterdam which is silent but is also deaf [all the things that i leave here in this greyish dusty room is an expression of a gesture outlined by her gesture
2nd leap how to look at your 2 year old daughter and at that piece of world that surrounds her after hearing from your neighbor that he doesn’t understand what you’re doing here as a mother and an artist being this mother in arts specially since he would never even date a mother? and then you look at the girl’s body that hangs on your lap and remember how shitty you can be as a woman and remember how disgusting you can be as a woman and remember that this is the 1st world and you finally remember that guilt pervades everything although it shouldn’t
3rd leap the freedom of a child bothers they want to amputate childhood the freedom of a child bothers they want to civilize childhood the freedom of a child bothers they want to be free to fall in a beautiful sickness the freedom of a child bothers - terrorist is the school and the state the freedom of a child bothers and you are not free to be disturbed either
to ask a child what she wants to be when she is grown up is to erase what she already is
4th leap the child gets under the table between your legs wants to be held wants your body wants the world wants to sleep wants more milk she will undo what is not finished yet - but what i call destruction is the construction of her experience she cries she leaks and with her everything infiltrates my body she is infiltration itself she gets under the door underneath everything through the possible holes over her mother treading softly the withered breast in a rubble of legos and fossils of rice crackers
5th leap i thought it would be easy until i had to start taking care of eleven stitches on my cunt even before taking care of what they’ve told me: - look, it’s your baby! the girl came from a wound which took two months to heal and never healed like the large & long & white accidental inches - commonly known as stretch marks on the belly the kid doesn’t heal how to take care of it until a warmy communication apparatus is set up? to have a kid it to outlive it with it
6th leap i remember the very first time i hit the road with my daughter in the maxi cozy - which is the uncozyest thing that i’ve met in my entire life i was alone and i felt as if all my internal organs were in a loose backpack flying away wobbling with the wind but still attached to the car this was in a beautiful sunny day fresh and i felt i was on the way to the abyss but i had to keep going to itaipava and i had to keep staying with my bugs
7th leap my child is an abyss my breast is made of pus and stone i am my child's house i am an inflamed stone
8th leap an atlantic leap o mar, a mãe e a mão de zee, de moeder en de hand i’m floating and flooding since i arrived with my heavy and shattered hand in three months i barely peed sometimes i leaked in my tights and panties i barely washed my hair i barely took shower but i managed to talk about my works with dora and maybe only with her who was so opened to me to the point i hurt her the most she was the only one at home with me for me against me with me for me against me
and maybe i was also so opened to her and to our life between the canals that i got also an infiltration on my tooth the molar 27 and had a canal treatment which i cannot pay for this is how my residency ended this is how i end: dripping this is how it ends: in our little political life failure is always a method
this could be a manifest
how many artists-and-mothers were historically forced to hide their motherhood from their work as well as from their lives as artists? if the artist is this being who is radically traversed by the world - this might sound too modern and even too grotesque said in 2017 - how is it possible that the question of motherhood has been so obliterated by so many mothers-andartists?
if motherhood is as we all agree a turning point in any woman's life what does it really do to the life of a woman who is an artist? for starters, we live in a male-dominated art world, not only in the sense that it is literally dominated by men, but also by a masculine attitude that excludes difference – and we can see it very clearly if we look from a kinda multi species perspective.
if you are a woman-artist a lot of what you do/are will be measured by "in a scale from 0 to 10 how fuckable you are". and as a mother you will luckily reach the 5 – as long as you manage to hide your maternity from the world. because if you spend a lot of time hanging out with your kid, changing diapers and feeding her or him [i’m not even touching on the subject of breastfeeding, cause this will be your most terrible death] you’ll easily reach the glorious 0. on the other hand, if you hide your child from your image as an artist, and from your public life, you will perhaps be able to perform the masculine gesture before the world with mastery and ease. how can you sound or look blasé if you are dirty with broccoli, play-doh, orange juice and maybe baby scented poo?
one of the most pedagogical experiences for me here in amsterdam during the mothers in arts residency [where i have been since march 1st “alone� with my almost 2 year old daughter, trying really hard with 3 other artists-and-mothers to do our best to make our shared daycare work in the middle of many daily struggles] has been to realize how people in general despise me for being a mother-artist, or for simply being a mother.
this is the first time, since i became a mother, that i have fully and profoundly experienced the feeling of being disgusting.
and i'm really lucky because despite all the disgutingness i feel towards me even on the part of male artists i can also feel how beautifully i fit the role of the crazy latin american woman who does not even serve to be fucked. at some point i really find this whole thing somewhat funny, cause nowadays, in my 30s, i have all the tools to deal with these impressions and understand the texture of the sickness of this heteropatriarchal driven world.
and once i have the tools with me and for me i should fight for an art world which doesn’t exclude the mothers and their powerful motherhood experiences from it.