The Mother Position

Cat. CFA Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin

Exhibition catalogue, edited by Bruno Brunnet and Nicole Hackert
curated and with texts (German/English) by Isabelle Graw
40 p with 14 coloured illustrations
280 x 200 mm, stapled brochure

ISBN 978-3-86442-450-2

19,80 €

The Power of Object Relations

The relationship between mother and child, or between caretaker and infant, has traditionally been represented as a symbiotic fusion within visual art; see the images of virgin and child by Raphael, for example. Inspired by the English psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, this exhibition takes a d»ifferent view of those early childhood »object relations« that continue to shape how we relate to others throughout our lives. In addition to love and affection, Klein argues, the bond between the baby and its mother is also marked by aggressions, ambivalences, and strong anxious phantasies. »The Mother Position« brings together artworks that negotiate the complex nature of this paradigmatic object relation, whose long-term consequences resonate throughout. It is precisely because no artistic practice can do without an object relation that the equally libidinal and destructive object phantasies are worth examining. From this perspective, the fact that social interactions are currently often defined by negative feelings, splits, and one-sided repudiations is not only due to social media and the much-invoked »polarization« of contemporary society. Instead, »The Mother Position« demonstrates that our relations to the external world are also the expression of an inner psychic life that gets projected to the outside (while outside events get introjected). The exhibition thus focuses less on motherhood in the narrow sense than on a psychic position and its object relations that has its starting point in early childhood. It is a position that we keep inhabiting throughout our lives according to Klein. More so: it is a position – and this is »The Mother Position’s« central argument – that shapes the relationship between artists and their objects in particular. (Isabelle Graw in her text »The Power of Object Relations«)

Exhibition:
CFA Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel, 31/8 – 26/10/2024