The Mother Position.
snoeck| N° d'inventaire | 31937 |
| Format | 20 x 28 |
| Détails | 40 p., numerous color figures, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2024 |
| Etat | nine |
| ISBN | 9783864424502 |
The bond between mother and child, or between caregiver and child, is traditionally depicted as a symbiotic fusion in visual art—one thinks, for example, of Raphael's Madonnas. Our exhibition, however, inspired by the English psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, takes a different look at these "object relations" of early childhood, which shape our relationships with others throughout our lives. In addition to love and care, the young child's attachment to their mother or caregiver is also characterized, according to Klein, by aggression, ambivalence, and imaginary fears. "The Mother's Position" brings together artistic works in which the complex chasms of these object relations are revealed and discussed. They also foreshadow the long-term consequences of this paradigmatic relationship. For it is precisely because no artistic practice can do without the connection to the object that the confrontation with fanciful objects that are as libidinous as they are destructive is worthwhile. The much-maligned "polarization" is therefore not the only cause, nor are social media, if bad feelings, divisions, and unjustified unilateral rejections largely determine the social interactions in our society today. "The Position of the Mother" demonstrates, on the contrary, that our relationships with others are also the expression of an inner psychological life projected onto the outside (while external episodes are, themselves, introjected). The exhibition is therefore less about motherhood in the strict sense of the term than about a psychological position and its object relationships that have their origins in early childhood. For Klein, we never cease to occupy this position throughout our lives and this position even marks the relationship of artists to their objects – this is the central argument of "The Position of the Mother" – in which it also appears on occasion (Isabelle Graw in her text "The Power of the Object Relation").
The bond between mother and child, or between caregiver and child, is traditionally depicted as a symbiotic fusion in visual art—one thinks, for example, of Raphael's Madonnas. Our exhibition, however, inspired by the English psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, takes a different look at these "object relations" of early childhood, which shape our relationships with others throughout our lives. In addition to love and care, the young child's attachment to their mother or caregiver is also characterized, according to Klein, by aggression, ambivalence, and imaginary fears. "The Mother's Position" brings together artistic works in which the complex chasms of these object relations are revealed and discussed. They also foreshadow the long-term consequences of this paradigmatic relationship. For it is precisely because no artistic practice can do without the connection to the object that the confrontation with fanciful objects that are as libidinous as they are destructive is worthwhile. The much-maligned "polarization" is therefore not the only cause, nor are social media, if bad feelings, divisions, and unjustified unilateral rejections largely determine the social interactions in our society today. "The Position of the Mother" demonstrates, on the contrary, that our relationships with others are also the expression of an inner psychological life projected onto the outside (while external episodes are, themselves, introjected). The exhibition is therefore less about motherhood in the strict sense of the term than about a psychological position and its object relationships that have their origins in early childhood. For Klein, we never cease to occupy this position throughout our lives and this position even marks the relationship of artists to their objects – this is the central argument of "The Position of the Mother" – in which it also appears on occasion (Isabelle Graw in her text "The Power of the Object Relation").