MOTHER FIGURE (2025 - Ongoing)

In a series of photographs, I invite participants to pose with me as a stand-in for their mother or a maternal figure. Through a visual emphasis on touch and gesture, the photographs capture the complex spectrum of experiences we have with caregivers: attachment and security, tension and neglect, intimacy and eroticism. By embodying the role of the maternal figure, I create a space where participants can reenact and reimagine their childhood experiences. Drawing inspiration from psychodrama – a therapeutic method where past experiences are restaged – the photographs hover between documentary and fantasy, blurring the line between personal history and theatrical performance.

The project stems from my internal conflict over not having biological children, and through these images I project my fantasies and fears of parenthood, as well as my curiosity about forms of “mothering” that exist beyond parenthood. When beginning this project, I felt a strong need to be seen in this mothering role, to perform “mothering” for a camera. Photography is a medium that holds a dynamic tension between what is seen and unseen, what is real and what is not, what is content and what is context. The medium both reinforces and questions reality, and through it, I ask what space I can create to explore my and my participants’ shifting relationships to family.