Magna Mater

Suspended installation (constructed textile made of cotton twill)

Dimensions: Approximately 3 meters high

 

 

Identifying with a child’s sense of imagination and ability to transform the everyday into something magical and larger than life, the artist has created a ‘Great Mother’ out of an enlarged, suspended apron, complete with a gaping front pocket and extra long tiebacks. Dramatically lit in a darkened room, and hung in a way that gives off the impression of an enormous voracious spider, it combines an archetypal reference to maternal aggression and bestiality with a more domestic and seemingly benign reference to the nurturing mother.

 

Reflecting the emotional immaturity of a young child (and arguably western culture in general) where the perception of the world is typically fashioned according to rigid binary polarisations, engendering stark projections of ‘good’ and ‘bad’,  Magna Mater combines comedy and horror into one absurd, nightmarish vision of the smothering monstrous mother, thus adding new life and drama to this old cliché.