Can they mother me, if I let them? (2020)
In her series, the young photographer Madeline Swainhart looks at the role of the mother figure in art and society. She places the mother in situations from which she is normally excluded, using symbols of, or references to motherhood in order to challenge the familiar image of the maternal figure and to rewrite the narrative. In ‘Can they mother me, if I let them?’ she reflects on where we find security and comfort, on why it is so difficult to allow yourself to be taken care of. Her choice of self-portraiture has enabled the series to become a personal tribute to motherhood, a fragile and intimate choreography of dependency and trust.
Madeline Swainhart’s work is a visual archive in the making with a focus on her obsessive relationship with the notion of the ‘mother’, stemming from deeply personal experiences and questions around sexuality and identity. She uses photography to redefine and rediscover kinship and to invent her own utopian motherhood.
