MOTHERLOAD BY TABITHA SOREN
MOTHERLOAD: The Mind Baby Problem Layered Images On Fabric Coated For Photographic Printing.
The Mind Baby Problem is a series of five self-portraits as a nursing mother, printed on coated cotton bedsheets at 54” x 75” each, hung in the manner of a laundry line, whose palette follows the day from cool dawn to warm dusk.
Two of the five sheets folded over themselves slightly askew, but the same image continues uninterrupted.
Each double-sided sheet is crisply photographic and gracefully sculptural. Each one makes public the intimate dyad of mother and child, which is the root of our highly social species.
At a time when artificial intelligence and global political regression pose the question “What does it mean to be human?”
This series answers with images of the sleep deprivation, emotional turbulence, and physically draining rollercoaster that is unconditional love.
MOTHERLOAD - The Mind Baby Problem || Exhibited at Photo Fairs in NYC September 2023 (shown above)
Materials: Five 2-sided UV-printed bedsheets with layered photographs from “Motherload” hung on laundry line and stabilized by floor weights.
Sheets are 54” x 75” each. Weights are concrete poured into a can attached with household laundry line rope.
Another way of exhibiting MOTHERLOAD’s layered photographs is the printed bassinet sheets tightened around lightweight foam & fiberboard cleated to wall. They are each 35.5 inches wide x 19 inches high x 3 inches deep. I have five of these. Because they are not real mattresses, they are not heavy. They are ready to hang.
MOTHERLOAD Archival Pigment Prints : 22” x 34” each - above and below. These are not framed or mounted.
Motherload began as archival pigment prints layered to mimic the haze of life with a newborn. Recorded over 12 months using a camera mounted over my bed, these multiple exposure images are a disorienting fusion of disrupted sleep, endless feeds, countless diaper changes and constant soothing.
Some of these photographs have 450 layers for the entirety of my son’s year-long nursing phase. Some of them only have a week’s or a night’s worth of pictures.
“Motherload” is another example of my interest in impediments to the humanistic encounter. I’m intentionally marring the visual field with an accumulated experience, which questions what in our lives impairs our ability to really see.
Time lapse “film strips” of MOTHERLOAD individual images
These are the photographs which I turned into layers to make up the compilation images . Size and specific images can be site-specific. The mockup above starts at dawn and ends at a middle of the night feeding. The final picture is an empty bed.
Above: Mock up of MOTHERLOAD 5 CHANNEL 15 MIN VIDEO WITH SOUND called STAYING ALIVE.
The video is finished but has never been exhibited.
Watch video here: https://bit.ly/SorenStayingAlive