You came out of me is a phrase one of the subjects repeats over and over in her attempts to enact her mother; to capture as per the artist’s instructions, her mother’s mannerisms, attributes, quirks, expressions, her habits. Separate to the artist’s explicit instructions were her sneaky, secret expectations, hidden from the subject’s understanding but actually forming the work’s basis: to capture the ultimately complex nature of our relationships with our mothers, and our limitations in understanding and representing them. In transition from self into mother and back again, a portrait of their mother, their relationship with their mother, and an unwitting self-portrait is revealed.
