-NOMOTHER
NOMOTHER
CAL XERTA MUSEUM. 2023
According to the RAE: mother. F. Woman who acts as a mother.
NOMOTHER is a poetic and visual project that moves between the real and the imaginary. An autobiographical story of discovery, learning, disagreements, abandonment and protection. Through it, Carmen Hurtado explores her process of individualization and the break with the inherited maternal archetype to learn to be and live differently.
The project questions the models of femininity and motherhood that we inherit, as well as the roles that we learn and reproduce as a consequence of a certain social and educational structure.
Carmen Hurtado introduces us to a universe populated by spiders, crustaceans, fish, plants, mirrors, chairs, fences, stairs, cables, books, knives and beds. Elements that connect with the symbolic mother and with spaces as metaphors of the body and learning. The body as a house; the house as a refuge and, at the same time, as a trap.
Through her works and poems, with allusions to Louise Bourgeois, the artist constructs a story of liberation and going out into the world. If the childhood home was a trap, outside it another appears: that of a society that feminizes women and subjects them to expectations about what they should be and do with their lives.
«She is not a normal mother. It could be a spider; a crustacean He gives me a lobster. We live in a house where plants invade it, etc. A mother who teaches me to be, to live differently.
— Artist Notes
The exhibition project is divided into three parts: I FEEL THE HOUSE LIKE A TRAP, LETTING DIE TO BE AND LIVE.
NOMOTHER. LETTER TO THE MOTHER
The project is completed with a self-published book, produced in parallel to the exhibition. A hybrid work of poetry, poetic prose and images of his works in collage, oil, photography, sculpture and drawing.
150 copies · HU editions
For availability and content, visit HU editions.
I don't want to be a mother
I want to be me
Mom
— First poem in the book