Motherhood, Grief, Art and Roland Barthes

Presented at the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference at Southbank University, Center for Media and Culture Research, School of Arts and Cfeative Industries, London, UK

For two years after Roland Barthes’ mother died, Barthes took notes on index cards about his grief. These 330 cards eventually became the book Mourning Diary (2009).

In the years after the loss of my son, I responded to this complex and unbearable situation in the language available to me – a series of visual art projects. They ranged from very direct responses like She Can’t Begin (2007), the first work that I created after my son’s death to Where were the Mothers? (2010) a work that explored questions around maternal guilt. I will also contextualize the work in the accompanying exhibition Walking with the Trees that we Planted Together (2014), in which I removed language and responded through bodily gestures in an intimate environment. 

During this same period I read countless books about grief and loss. Only when I stumbled upon Mourning Diary did I find a voice that echoed my state of being and intersected with aspects of my art projects.

I presented an illustrated performative talk consisting of a conversation between Roland Barthes and myself. This talk merged readings from Mourning Diary with applicable elements from the works mentioned above.   

This conversation ruminated on the parallels between losing a mother and being the mother who loses an offspring, as well as both rational and more visceral responses to a rupture in the maternal bond. These included the connection to place and especially home, and the seemingly irrational need for order.

1) Barthes, Roland  Mourning Diary October 26, 1977 – September 15, 1979 Translated and with an afterward by Richard Howard.  Hill and Wang – A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2009.