Episode 51: Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document (1973-79)
“It was all evidence of how well I was doing.”
In the final weeks of my pregnancy, it dawned on me that I wasn’t actually going to be pregnant forever (despite all evidence to the contrary). I realized that this time, which had seemed interminable, was actually so close to being a blip, a realization was perhaps a harbinger of things to come...you know, as a parent.
So I started bring my mic with me, to doctor’s appointments, to my delivery room, and then as the little guy adjusted to the outside - and I adjusted to motherhood - soaking up the sounds of this longest shortest time. I knew, on some level, that this was what the Conceptual feminist artist Mary Kelly was all about too, much as I’d dismissed her in college. And I also knew, much the way that "Post-Partum Document," her seminal work, helped Kelly explain motherhood to herself and to the art world, that maybe there was an episode buried deep in those recordings. They seem more relevant now than ever, especially to a world that has been experiencing this new-mom-untethering-from-time for almost a whole year.
In other words, Kelly needed her art to help her understand motherhood, I needed to become a mother to understand Mary Kelly. And maybe we all needed this pandemic to really understand moms.
Images Referenced:
Music Used:
The Blue Dot Sessions, “La Inglesa,” “Eggs and Powder,” “Paper Feather,” “Arizona Moon,” ”Lowball,” “Palladian,” “Simple Vale”
Additional Links:
