Early motherhood is a liminal state that challenges social norms and hierarchies. As a woman transitions to motherhood, her body changes through leaking, slipping, and stretching. She is no longer solely an individual but takes on the role of "mummy" as well. These liminal bodily states associated with mothering, such as breastfeeding and dealing with various secretions, threaten the social order as they blur boundaries. Our culture uses rituals and rules to control and contain the power of this liminal state, such as prescribing when, where and how a mother should breastfeed. The document examines how three artists - Louise Bourgeois, Janine Antoni, and Dennis Ferris - have depicted the ambiguous lived experiences of mother

1. December 2017
Kath Lovett
Early motherhood is liminal and hence dangerous: discuss
Liminality is an ambiguous state; a person hovers at the threshold between one
circumstance and another. They are not what they once were and are not yet what they are
going to become. In my essay, I will argue that early motherhood is a state of liminality.
You are no longer just you, you are now ‘mummy’ as well as what you once were. Your
body has changed, there is leakage and slipperiness, relationships have to be renegotiated,
your daily routines are turned on their head.
Liminal states are problematic in our society because they contain power, ‘danger lies in
transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next, it is
undefinable’ (Douglas 2007: 119). Douglas argues that this liminal state of becoming a
‘marginal being’ (ibid: 121) is controlled through society’s rituals regarding pollution and
purification. Breastmilk, blood, urine, faeces and tears are all matter coming from the
margins of the body (ibid: 150) and are all associated with the birthing process and early
days of parenting. These secretions of the maternal body could be seen as abject as the
abject does not know bodily boundaries; it is on the edge of meaning, or the borderline, and
threatens the social order (Kristeva 1982). ‘The feminine-maternal body in its changing
state is linked to bodily wastes, dissolution and decay that signify the dangerous
permeability between inside and outside and the threat to the individual subject’ (Betterton
1996: 159).
Our culture has ways to protect the social order through rituals and boundaries which
harness the power of the liminal state of the mother, and to ensure that children are being
brought up in the way our specific culture (according to background, age, ethnicity etc.)
deems acceptable. Breastfeeding challenges our cultural ideas that privilege the individual,
autonomy and separation (Shildrick 1997), our bodies are literally joined to another in a
non-sexual manner. Breastfeeding is controlled in our society by a series of rules and
rituals; if you love your child, you SHOULD breastfeed, but not for too many months, only
every three hours, with no hint of breast showing and ideally at home in private, alone.
I am going to examine three artists who have used the idea of feeding in their work. It has
been difficult to find relevant artists and I find this, in itself, interesting. My essay will look
at how the liminal state of early motherhood is treated by society and how artists have
responded by showing a lived reality of alternative mothering.

2. Louise Bourgeois, The good mother, 2007
Gouache on paper, 5.93 x 4.55 cm
Bourgeois paints in red gouache, wet on wet – bleeding,
splattering of marks, title touches on Melanie Klein’s good
breast/bad breast and Winnicot’s ideas of being a ‘good enough
mother’. The mother as slightly monstrous: the infants in an
ambiguous state of reaching or fleeing.
Janine Antoni, Umbilical, 2000
Sterling silver, 20.32 x 7.62 x 7.62 cm
Antoni cast the inside of her mother cupped around
a silver monographed spoon, a family heirloom. The
other end is a cast of the negative space around her
mother’s hand. Touching on Winnicot’s ideas that
there is no infant in the very early days as the child is
essentially still part of the mother (Winnicott 2005). According to Kristeva food is a
‘powerful metaphor for the conflicted relationship of sameness and difference between our
mothers and our selves’ (Betterton 1996: 145). Silvered, monographed spoon suggests ideas
of preciousness and family lineage against the clutching mouth and more passive hand.
Dennis Ferris, milk and poison prints, 2004
Milk, or casein, is visible, but the poison is hidden but
inseparable. ‘I developed the formal language of casein,
making milk prints, to convey duality and ambiguity, loss and
maternal pleasure assertion and transgression, but most
significantly ambivalence and resistance.’ (ed. Buller 2012:
198)
Beyoncé, photograph of twins, 2017 – perhaps!
I would love to include this image somehow! It is the most
‘liked’ photograph of all time on Instagram, so must reflect a
certain part of society’s (those who use Instagram) views on
motherhood. It references images of the Virgin Mary, idealised
images of motherhood, but also Botticelli’s Birth of Venus,
which is all about sex, prosperity and fertility. She shows her
stomach as if to point out the birth was ‘natural’, rather than a
C-section. Everything is ordered, stylised and highly feminine.

3. Bibliography
Betterton, R (1996) Intimate Distance London: Routledge
Buller, RE (ed) (2012) Reconciling Art and Mothering Farnham: Ashgate
Douglas, M (2007) Purity and Danger London: Routledge
Kokoli, A (2016) The Feminist Uncanny London: Bloomsbury
Kristeva, J (1982) Powers of Horror New York: Columbia Uni Press
Liss, A (2009) Feminist Art and the Maternal Minneapolis: Uni of Minnesota
Schildrick, M (1997) Leaky Bodies and Boundaries London: Routledge
Winnicott DW (2005) Playing and Reality London: Routledge Classics