Matrescence and Performance: Becoming/Unbecoming

Bol

Matrescence and Performance examines how performance can challenge and expand conventional representations of becoming a mother. Across the history of art and literature, maternal bodies—along with the processes of pregnancy, childbirth, and sustenance—have often been cast as uncanny, abject, grotesque, monstrous, or hybrid. Societal conventions and myths about “good” and “bad” mothers have further constrained the depiction of maternal ambivalence and labour, leaving the lived experiences of matrescence largely invisible in galleries, mainstream art, and media. Contemporary performance provides a context where becoming a mother is perceived as also an unbecoming, opening up richer and more nuanced understandings of matrescence. 'Matrescence and Performance offers a much-needed new feminist lens for understanding the complexities of motherhood, written from a perspective of deep understanding, sensitivity and theoretical expertise. Bissell walks the reader through a wide array of works, from live art to theatre, to reconsider ingrained mythologies, stereotypes, and assumptions, and consider all facets of the maternal experience, from pregnancy and childbirth to loss, infertility and refusal.' Dr Lucy Weir, Reader in History of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK. 'This is a profound and original book adding an important perspective to the field of maternal performance scholarship. Matrescence and Performance is a highly thoughtful investigation of maternal artmaking, and a joy to read.' Professor Emily Underwood-Lee, University of South Wales, UK. 'In this powerfully argued book, Bissell takes a clear feminist position when discussing matrescence in art and explores the feminist blind spot around matrescence; a much-needed perspective. This is a splendid addition to maternal discourse that celebrates creativity and artistic agency.' Dr Elena Marchevska, Professor of Artistic Research, London South Bank University, UK Laura Bissell is a performance researcher, writer, and arts educator. She is an Athenaeum Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK. An exploration of what performance can do to expand conventional representations of becoming a mother. Maternal bodies and processes of pregnancy, childbirth and sustenance have historically been depicted in art and literature as variously uncanny, abject, grotesque, monstrous, and hybrid. Societal conventions and myths around what makes a good or bad mother have limited the representations of maternal ambivalence and labour. Lived experiences of matrescence as depicted by mothers themselves have remained almost invisible with little exposure in galleries or mainstream art and media. Challenging complex and disparaging representations, or the erasure and invisibility of experiences of matrescence altogether, contemporary mother/artists working in the field of performance use their live bodies to subvert dominant images of conventional myths of motherhood. Using strategies of mimesis, liveness, embodiment, relationality, and performativity to render their own matrescent bodies, these artists explore historically pejorative theoretical concepts and aesthetics in new, feminist ways. This book frames performance as a site where becoming a mother can be understood as both a becoming and an unbecoming to expand understandings of matrescence.

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