A question male artists to this day are never asked: Can you work while raising a child? In the first year of “motherhood,” women are susceptible to feelings of isolation. There’s neither time enough to ponder the significance of her experience, nor the energy to refute the system that sits in judgment of her labor. Female artists are deprived even of time spent in their studios, and this isolation often leads to despair. The dearth of art works addressing motherhood to this day is a good indicator of reality. A dedicated, devoted mother who loves her child no matter the circumstances – this is the life patriarchy forces upon women. This holds true regardless of whether or not they are artists.

Youngjoo Cho’s solo exhibition 《Cotton Era》takes as its starting point the conflict between one’s identity as mother and artist. In September 2016, Cho gave birth to her first child. For thirty months, she kept a record of her child’s daily patterns and development, noting everything from sleep, nutrition, and physical changes to overall health. This baby book filled entirely with measurable information is the backdrop to an exhibition that examines in abstraction the lived experience of being a mother. The biorhythm of the child, the rhythm of life, is the basis for works that tease out the emotional tension and dynamic between carer and cared-for, and the arc of maturation over time.

A question female artists – whose subject happens to be motherhood – are often asked: It’s not like you’re the first to raise children, so why the fuss? The experience of motherhood is private and individual as well as universal, and is shocking. But patriarchy habituates women into disregarding the shock of motherhood. In the male-dominated mainstream contemporary art world, motherhood is still not accepted as a radical subject. Questions about motherhood are categorized under stale antipathy toward traditional maternity rather than as a social and structural issue. Regardless of the realities and politics, Youngjoo Cho centers her experience of motherhood in her artistic practice.

The video Feathers on Lips features four female performers. Against the backdrop of a white space, the four split into twos and take turns physically confronting one another over five rounds. Minkyung Lee, the choreographer who collaborated with the artist for this work, borrows the movements and dynamic gestures of jujitsu and wrestling to create friction-filled movements. Two women tightening their arms around each other’s neck or squeezing their thighs around the other’s body; in an embrace they stare into blank space, before resuming their fight. Bodies colliding, jagged breathing, shouts as each gather their energy before making a move – the sounds produced as two women make physical contact supply the sole audio track.

In Three Breaths, a video recording of an instrumental performance is projected near an exhaust duct. The duct, which draws inspiration from the umbilical cord, traverses the exhibition space. Four male musicians appear in the video. The composer Eunji Lee collaborated on this piece with her contribution of a three-movement composition, which takes as its motif the three stages as recorded in Cho’s baby book. Bass clarinet, alto saxophone, tuba, percussion – four lower-register instruments make up the ensemble. In the first movement, as the child’s breath separates from the mother’s breath, we have air sound; in the second and third movements, as the child is growing, we start to hear the sound transition to a sound with pitch. In the second movement we hear the metallic clanging of jeongju and bells, and the last movement ends with finger crotales, which have an ample resonance. The video zooms in on a pair of men’s lips breathing into a wind instrument. Whewww huhhhhh hmmmmm. It’s a sound that’s reminiscent of the sighs a mother might make as she looks after her child. The frustration of a mother, the desperation of an artist. A baby endlessly expressing its needs with no regard for the mother’s state of mind, the despair of one-sided communication. The wind instruments and the sounds made as air moves through the duct combine to create an endless dissonance.

Cotton is an essential, ubiquitous material in the care of a child, whether used in the form of cotton balls, diapers, towels, or bedding. Its soft, cozy texture against skin jogs our senses, reminding us of the warmth of a mother’s embrace. Cotton is at the same time a metaphor for both unpaid domestic labor (e.g. laundry), and what has typically been deemed paid women’s work, textile labor. Cotton Era is a rare attempt to question structural and systemic biases from the lived experiences, sensory and otherwise, of motherhood.

References

• 대안공간루프 (Alternative Space LOOP)