Video, 2 minutes, (2005-2006)

 

A documentation film of soap use, this project recorded its daily use and disappearance, in order to recode meanings and representations of a mother’s body.

The soap was a French brand called le savon de bonne mere – the good mother soap. It was photographed every day -when I had time – and a montage made of its gradual disappearance. It was a self-evident metaphor for women who mother, and who are physically and metaphysically worn down, as well as an ironic comment on attitudes about good and bad mothering.

By inferred intimate proximity to the body, and its disappearance the soap performed the mother’s body, visualising a maternal body which is absent as Subject in discourse and in representation.

The work was featured on the Art Cornwall site: http://www.artcornwall.org/archive_index.htm

Have a look at other work that references the maternal body.