Let Down
Let Down, (with M.A.M.A.), 1998.
Installation with lactating sink.
“Without Alarm II: Public and Private Security," curated by the Arroyo Art Collective, Old Los Angeles County Jail, Los Angeles, CA
The founding members of M.A.M.A. (Mother Artists Making Art) are Athena Kanaris, Lisa Mann, Karen Schwenkmeyer, and Lisa Schoyer, with backgrounds in photography, film, installation, writing, dance, and performance.
This collaborative group of mother-artists was formed to support each other in salvaging, theorizing, and representing through our artworks, our experience of being mothers, especially in teasing out those experiences which are invisible or taboo in terms of the norms (for example the sensual possibilities of pregnancy, breast feeding and the relation of mother and child, are taboo in this culture.) It is these unspoken experiences which are in danger of being buried and forgotten.
Installation with lactating sink.
“Without Alarm II: Public and Private Security," curated by the Arroyo Art Collective, Old Los Angeles County Jail, Los Angeles, CA
The founding members of M.A.M.A. (Mother Artists Making Art) are Athena Kanaris, Lisa Mann, Karen Schwenkmeyer, and Lisa Schoyer, with backgrounds in photography, film, installation, writing, dance, and performance.
This collaborative group of mother-artists was formed to support each other in salvaging, theorizing, and representing through our artworks, our experience of being mothers, especially in teasing out those experiences which are invisible or taboo in terms of the norms (for example the sensual possibilities of pregnancy, breast feeding and the relation of mother and child, are taboo in this culture.) It is these unspoken experiences which are in danger of being buried and forgotten.
Andrea Liss described this installation in her book, Feminist Art and the Maternal:
"Let Down was installed, ironically and appropriately, at the site of a former jail.... "Let down" is the medical term that refers to the moment, finally, after an often painful buildup, when the milk flows out of the mother's breasts. Although the metaphors of isolation and unlawfulness of the jail cell are appropriate for a work about mothers out of place, mothers who breastfeed in public, this was also a space designed by M.A.M.A. to feel contemplative. Everything was painted white–the walls, the ceiling, the built-in space for a bed and a sink. As in [M.A.M.A.'s performance piece] Milkstained, a continuous flow of milky fluid was ever-present in this quiet space as it streamed out of the sink's faucet. One participant was allowed in the space at a time. The only place to sit or recline was in the area where there had once been a bed. Strewn along this space were pieces of white paper cut like the small pieces of paper in fortune cookies that, when opened, revealed mothers' feelings about breast-feeding, from its difficulties to its erotic pleasures."
"Let Down was installed, ironically and appropriately, at the site of a former jail.... "Let down" is the medical term that refers to the moment, finally, after an often painful buildup, when the milk flows out of the mother's breasts. Although the metaphors of isolation and unlawfulness of the jail cell are appropriate for a work about mothers out of place, mothers who breastfeed in public, this was also a space designed by M.A.M.A. to feel contemplative. Everything was painted white–the walls, the ceiling, the built-in space for a bed and a sink. As in [M.A.M.A.'s performance piece] Milkstained, a continuous flow of milky fluid was ever-present in this quiet space as it streamed out of the sink's faucet. One participant was allowed in the space at a time. The only place to sit or recline was in the area where there had once been a bed. Strewn along this space were pieces of white paper cut like the small pieces of paper in fortune cookies that, when opened, revealed mothers' feelings about breast-feeding, from its difficulties to its erotic pleasures."
Feminist Art and the Maternal, Andrea Liss, 2008. See ppgs 75-79 Downloadable pdf