Un-mothering

You are that part of me that I have always been ashamed of.

You will never be the one I want you to be, and I will never give you what you need.

I put a spell on you so you would always be mine. I promise to stay faithful to you.

Even if you don’t step down your path, I love you.

I was within you, but your pain is no longer mine.

If I put your burden down, will you pick it up?

You are that part of me that I have always hidden.

Your face reveals the me that I reject, and the you that I love.

My body and soul are no longer haunted by your pain.

The role you gave me, I give it back to you.

I used you to tell myself that I am worthy.

Un-mothering is an ongoing project that explores family history, female lineage, and separation.

It questions the patriarchal expectations of women as mothers and nurturers that influences their rights to their own bodies and desires.

Inspired by the French philosopher, Anne Dufourmantelle’s work and by my own psychotherapy (focused on the mother-child relationship), I use found photos that are

reminiscent of my family archive lost during the Iranian revolution and the following war. I draw on family narratives, and the vernacular language that emerges through talk therapy to give a second life to the photos by writing one key phrase repeatedly on the photographed subjects. The phrases are written in my mother tongue Farsi.

The repetition evokes what Dufourmantelle refers to as an oath or a spell unconsciously given to the child by the mother.

I emphasize the power of the spoken word in an attempt to reimagine this bond and break the old patterns. The subjects in the photographs carry the texts like a vessel. Through this work, I aim to recreate a family archive aimed at healing, in commemoration and recognition of the living female bodies and the female bodies that came before me.