Price: $39.95
Page Count: 392
Publication Date: September 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77258-209-3
Epp Buller’s and Reeve’s anthology showcases an array of rich and diverse work. The three sections, “Body Politics,” “Family Practices” and “By Design,” comprise overlapping yet distinct discussions of individual artists, critical theory, personal testaments, interviews and conversations, while employing a multiplicity of approaches to the still controversial discussion of the maternal body in visual art, performance and design. The design section was a revelation to me in its consideration of the constraints placed upon the maternal body in the constructed environment. Inappropriate Bodies is a welcome addition to the as yet under-represented field of maternal studies.
-- Myrel Chernick, co-editor, with Jennie Klein, of The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art
With clarity and precision, Inappropriate Bodies allows us to understand the delicate, complex links between maternity and art. While circling around the ideology of appropriateness of maternity, Epp Buller and Reeve unravel the cultural coding that surrounds it in artistic, academic and cultural contexts. The book addresses both art and design practices and explores how the work that they analyse reinforces particular expectations of maternity while implicitly negating non-conforming experiences. This is a necessary, timely collection for all scholars and artists invested in exploring the maternal in the creative context.
-- Elena Marchevska, Associate Professor Performance Studies, London South Bank University
Click here to read a review from HyperAllergic
Rachel Epp Buller, “Inappropriate Bodies: An Entry Point”
Body Politics
Julia V. Hendrickson, “The Mother-Shaped Hole: Lise Haller Baggesen’s Mothernism”
Irene Pérez, “Dear M: Blue Boys, Pink Girls, and Other Myths”
Jennie Klein, “The Mother Without Child / The Child Without Mother: Miriam Schaer’s Interrogation of Maternal Ideology, Reproductive Trauma, and Death”
Tina Kinsella, “The Artistic Practice of Micol Hebron: Provoking a Performative Heuristics of the Maternal Body”
Shira Richter, “The Motherbody Model: An Invitation for a Care-Based Work Ethic”
Lydia Gordon, “Mother or Not: Parafictional Motherhood in the Work of Chelsea Knight”
Caroline Langill, “Baby Mine: Artists, Maternity, and Disability”
Family Practices
Niku Kashef, “The Durational Performance of the Parent-Artist and Other Subversive Acts”
Charles Reeve, “Inside/Outside/Beside the Mothering Machine: A Conversation with Jess Dobkin”
Deirdre Donoghue, “In Search of the Maternal: Towards Microchimeric Bodies and Maternal Relational Aesth-ethics”
Alicia Harris, “These Objects Call Us Back: Kinship Materiality in Native America”
Terri Hawkes, Dyana Gravina, Anna Ehnold-Danailov, and Line Langebek, “’Other’ Mother-Artists’ Acts of Resistance in the UK: A Conversation Among Friends”
By Design
Doreen Balabanoff, “The Inappropriate Birthing Body and How the Birth Environment is Implicated”
Heidi Overhill, “Baby Lust: Biology and Four Types of Products”
Ruchika Wason Singh and Rachel Epp Buller, “Making Space for Artist Mothers in Asia: A Conversation”
Amber Berson and Juliana Driever, “The Let Down Reflex: Addressing the Spaces of Art, Labour, and Parenthood”
Rachel Epp Buller, Lena Šimić, and Emily Underwood-Lee, “The Body in Letters: Once Again, Through Time and Space”
Natalie Loveless, “Maternal Bodies and Collective Action: a conversation with Christa Donner, Andrea Francke, Kim Dhillon, and Martina Mullaney”
Charles Reeve, Afterword
Contributor Bios
Rachel Epp Buller is a feminist art historian, visual artist, university professor, and mother of three whose work speaks to these intersections. She privileges collaboration in artistic and scholarly endeavors, including the edited Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate/Routledge) and the curatorial cooperation Alice Lex-Nerlinger 1893-1975: Photomonteurin und Malerin / Photomontage Artist and Painter (Das Verborgene Museum / Lukas Verlag).
Charles Reeve is associate professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Art at OCAD University. He is president of his faculty union and the Universities Art Association of Canada and the author of Artists’ Autobiographies from Contemporary to Renaissance and Back (Routledge).
List of Illustrations
[list cover image info inside front cover] Cover image: Ruchika Wason Singh, Balagan in Metamorphosis I, 2015. Chinese ink and Chinese painting on xuanjhie paper, 69.85 x 69.85 cm.
Lise Haller Baggesen, outdoor pergola entrance to Mothernism installation, 2016 at The Contemporary Austin, Texas
Lise Haller Baggesen, Mothernism installation details, 2016 at The Contemporary Austin, Texas
Lise Haller Baggesen, Mothernism installation in use at The Contemporary Austin, 2016
Irene Pérez, YOUR (pleasure) MY (pain), 2012, graphite, goauche and fabric on watercolor paper
Irene Pérez, Mirror, Mirror, 2011, lipstick on watercolor paper
Irene Pérez, Ugly is an Ugly Word, 2012, cross-stitch embroidery
Irene Pérez, 1 to 3, 2012, cross-stitch embroidery
Irene Pérez, Vellesa_Bellesa (Old Age Beauty), 2015, cross-stitch embroidery. Translation of the text in the art work: “I will not hide the gifts that time has given to my body”
Miriam Schaer, The Presence of Their Absence #35, 2015. Digital C print
Miriam Schaer, Ida and Tabitha #39, 2014. Digital C print
Micol Hebron, Male Nipple Pasty, 2014
Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) with Micol Hebron’s Male Nipple Digital Pasty
Amedeo Modigliani’s Red Nude (1917) with Micol Hebron’s Male Nipple Digital Pasty
Micol Hebron, Incubo, 1997, performance still
Elizabeth MacKenzie, Radiant Monster, 1996, installation
Elizabeth MacKenzie, Baby (series), 2010, watercolour
Martha Eleen, The World, 2011, oil on wood
Martha Eleen, Watershed #5, 2017, oil on wood
Judith Scott, Untitled 1988-2004, twenty sculptures, Venice Biennale, 2017
Marni Kotak, The Birth of Baby X, 2011. Durational performance and installation.
Courtney Kessel, In Balance With, 2015. Performance still.
Seth Kaufman, 25 PB&J Photos, inkjet print on MDO plywood
Jamison Carter and Margaret Griffith, Earthen Gates, 2015. Soil and Acrylic binder on paper.
Jess Dobkin, The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar, 2006. Promotional image announcing the public tasting.
Jess Dobkin, Everything I’ve Got, 2010. Promotional image announcing the live performance.
Weronika Zielinska, 7 months pregnant, 2009
Weronika Zielinska, Art-Working Space, 2011
Marcel Broodthaers, Musée d’Art Moderne Département des Aigles- Section XVII, 1969
Weronika Zielinska, After Broodthaers, 2010, digital print
Weronika Zielinska, Guestroom Project, April 2011
Weronika Zielinska, Guestroom Project, May 2011
Weronika Zielinska, Upominki, 2013, artist project space
Courtney Kessel, Sharing Space, 2012, five video stills
Rose B. Simpson, Ground, 2016, sculptural installation
Marie Watt, installation of Skywalker/Skyscraper, 2012, at PDX Contemporary
Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Portal), 2012. Reclaimed wool blankets and thread
Doreen Balabanoff, Noticing Time and Light – the Implicate Order, 2016
Doreen Balabanoff, Birth Centre conceptual plan, 2016
Doreen Balabanoff, Rooftop Birth Centre modules, 2016. Cinema 4D modelling by Finlay Peterson and Steve Reaume
Doreen Balabanoff, Birthing Room, bird’s eye view, 2016
Ruchika Wason Singh, publicity image for A.M.M.A.A. project launch, 2016
Patty Hudak, Sailing to Byzantium, 2015, acrylic on voile
Ma Yanling, Black Swan, 2014 performance
Rachel Epp Buller, Lena Šimić, and Emily Underwood-Lee, handwritten letters, 2017-18
Enemies of Good Art, Whitechapel Gallery Meeting, 2010
Making it What We Need workshop, Cultural ReProducers Childcare-Supported Event Series, 2015
Andrea Francke, Oscar Francke Coco, and Kaye Egerton at the London College of Communication protesting to keep the UAL nursery open during the University and College Union strike action on 27 May 2010
Enemies of Good Art, Royal College of Art Meeting, 2010
Invisible Spaces of Parenthood (Kim Dhillon and Andrea Francke), Poster for Creche Course, The Showroom, London, 11 January 2014
Christa Donner and Selina Trepp introduce an event in the Cultural ReProducers Childcare-Supported Event Series at the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, 2014
Enemies of Good Art, Tate Modern Meeting, 2010
Cultural ReProducers event at Gallery 400, Chicago, 2014
Invisible Spaces of Parenthood (Kim Dhillon and Andrea Francke), Shapes (workshop), Changing Play commission at Portman Early Years Centre, London. Commissioned by Serpentine Galleries, London.
Charles Reeve, family photograph, 1963
