JAYNE MATRICARDI: MOTHERSCAPE

Thought Forms
vintage doll and View Master, 8 x 6 x 6 inches, 2020

Just as draft animals have been domesticated and obliged to bear their master’s burdens, I felt colonized by my children’s needs and ashamed of feeling so. How could such a small baby be regarded as a burden, or even a colonizer? And what kind of mother was I for such feelings? I didn’t fit the mold; I couldn’t live up to society’s expectations of motherhood: that I  should be happily selfless and eternally self-sacrificing. Thought Forms, my sculpture of an armless doll sitting passively, her head replaced by a television set, embodies how my mind felt colonized by society’s expectations of motherhood. Additionally, I consciously stretch my personal reference of colonization to colonialism in the Beasts of Burden series with European infants on animals such as zebras, camels, and antelopes. In doing so, I point to the absurdity and damage of colonialism whether on the scale of entire populations, or that of an overworked mother.