The myth of the Eerie Wife exists on every continent.
A magical maiden is able to transform, at will, from human to animal, with her own enchanted animal skin. In every version of the story, a man becomes obsessed with her and steals her pelt, trapping her in human form, and pressing her into marriage and motherhood. She lives the life of a human wife: bearing children, performing chores, until finally, one day, her pelt is returned and she flies away.
My mother was a ballerina when she fell unexpectedly pregnant. Like so many young women, her creativity became something necessarily poured into whatever small domestic containers were available. She didn’t express discontent, exactly, but I could always see that her containers were too small, too easily packed away, too often derailed by circumstance. When I had my own child I was viscerally shocked by the world’s interpretation of my biological capacity, and I too quit making art, for years.
In this work, my nieces prepare a special witchy intergenerational performance of Swan Lake for my mother, and my kid goes on a quest to restore her pelt.
THE UBIQUITOUS MYTH OF THE EERIE WIFE is a response to Ron Muek’s Pregnant Woman and her self-contained occupation of
@maitlandregionalartgallery . It’s also an artist-mother’s Spell For Flying, and a Lineage Spell to retroactively restore my mother’s autonomy (and her mother’s, and her mother’s…women whose relationship with creativity was hijacked by a cultural idea of motherhood). It’s also a Protective Spell: by reframing and transmitting the Eerie Wife myth through the young artists in my family, they can perhaps find new pathways through the cultural tangle of gender, agency, biology, love, parenthood and art.
It was my deepest pleasure to work again with
@kubadora ,
@tamaraelkinsartist (as choreographer and performer) and
@thereal_sallywhitwellmusic , as well as my brilliant nieces, my mama and my own lovely kid. It’ll open at the end of March at Maitland along with MARGARET AND THE GREY MARE. I’d love to see you there.
