Abstract

"The Mother Image" is a corpus of work that explores my identity as a mother since the birth of the first of my two sons twelve years ago. I became interested in the social and cultural experience of contemporary motherhood based on my own trajectory and as it relates to family. The body of artworks I produced in conjunction with this written thesis was exhibited at The Quebec Craft Museum (Le Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec) in Montreal, from September 24 th , 2009 to January 10, 2010. My French-Irish heritage is rooted in my Montreal ancestry and is emphasized within the museum space, an historical Neo-Gothic former Church. These specific histories act as a timeline that extends to my present day experience and includes them within the larger archive that is represented by the museum's collection. The encounter between my work and this space, further dialogues with the Christian elements of my Catholic background as they relate to both the architecture and the objects of the permanent collection found within this former church. My feminist research concerns itself with the woman both as an individual and a maternal subject. More specifically I am interested in the process of becoming that is particular to the feminine experience. By looking at the artworks of Canadian artists Kati Campbell, Aganetha Dyck and Jin-Me Yoon who also include the mother image in their works, I endeavor to position my perspective within a larger context. Further I examine the link between my fibre art practice and the history of women's textile crafts in Quebec, based on one of the textile objects found in the museum's collection. I also link this object to my own position as a Quebec-born Canadian woman whose history is intrinsically linked to this object's representation. iv