Eti Wade

Artist Statement

I began making work about motherhood in 2001 wanting to make visible maternal ambivalence. The myth of unconditional love and care that a mother is expected to feel towards her child regardless is an oppressive ideological position which isolates and silences any experience that differs. My practice is informed by psychoanalysis and feminist theory and I am concerned with articulating maternal subjectivity. Extracting the mother as unique subject from the ideologically fused 'mother - child' is challenging. It requires me to sometimes use shocking and disturbing imagery to counteract the dominant representation of the devoted and fulfilled 'Madonna' type mother that have for the most part shaped the ideological framing of motherhood. I use the domestic / maternal everyday as the source of my creative interventions. I make the invisible visible and insist on a representation of the mother / maternal subjectivity. I see myself as continuing in the footsteps of Mary Kelly and Sally Mann.