Reflections on motherhood and preservations of knowledge
Responding to Muttererde by Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor
In Muttererde, Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor uses reflective, vulnerable, conversations with artists to tell five tales that are simultaneously interwoven and discrete. The film features five Black artists based in various parts of the world: Tobi Ayedadjou, Niv Acosta, Fannie Sosa, Natalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Camalo Gaskin. Upon watching this film, we are invited to think about how our families’ stories inform our practice, and how knowing more about artists’ stories affects the perception of their work. Each artist answers the questions that the film explores: what their ancestral rituals are, what has been passed down from generation to generation, and how they want the generations after them to answer these questions. Parts of the film are separated by quotations, or prompts, that both the speaker and the viewer can consider.
After watching this film, I was led to think about the context we receive when viewing pieces of art, detailing its background or what has inspired it. Of course, art does not inherently necessitate knowledge of the artists’ history; one of the best parts of experiencing art is exploring how that comes through. When discussed explicitly, though, it can add another dimension to understanding an artist’s discipline. Muttererde makes room for acknowledging that our practices and beliefs are shaped, to varying extents, by what we have seen, what our mothers have seen and what our mothers’ mothers have seen too. Early in the film for instance, Camalo talks about her mother’s birthing experience being made more difficult by the medical staff’s racist distribution of medical support. This subtly foreshadows Camalo’s work as a doula creating an affirming, calm space for people to give birth. Upon beginning her practice, Camalo was able to foster this environment without reading around this subject but by using her intuitive skill. At the end of the film, each artists’ work and practice was shown as a natural, resultant part of their stories. We learn how each of their experiences led to the practice that felt most necessary and natural to them, and how their experiences told them what they needed to share with the world.
As I listen to each of these conversations, it strikes me how valuable it is to reflect upon the place that motherhood has in your life. We could all share a thought we had about a guardian figure as a child and as an adult, be it a trivial or substantial reflection. Muttererde creator Taylor leads conversations that strike a link between these thoughts. Fannie Sosa now has the vocabulary to understand that the expectations their family had of them as a child, seen then as protective, were harsher expectations and disclaimers given exclusively to Black children. After watching his mother fight for her place in the world, Niv Acosta knows the significance of the lessons she shared with him as a child on how to physically fend for himself if and when it was necessary. He recognises that this is something that will be held for posterity. Recognising the disparity in the amount of rest afforded to Black people, Sosa and Acosta created Black Power Naps, a curatorial initiative that practices intentional rest and recuperation from the disproportionate expectations to perform and fight for space in this world.
This film is an exploration of what it means to embody, embrace, and reshape the teachings and practices of those before you. Reflecting on the value of elders in her Beninese community, Tobi Ayedadjou shares the saying, “when an elder dies, a whole library is burned.” This is a central theme of the film and acts as a prompt for a section of the discussion. This is the library that gave Camalo all the reading she needed to start her work as a doula; it is the library that told Tobi that to be a woman is to be a mother. It is not instinctive to share the practices and actions of our mothers and their mothers with such honest care and thoughtfulness. It is in these libraries that each artist is able to access the history, then allowing for reflection and forgiveness to be centered in the stories shared with Taylor.
Taylor writes that, through watching these conversations, we learn that their archival nature can challenge the status quo. It is in the artists’ resolutions about their future practice, and what they will pass down to their descendants, that we see an alternative way to collect oral history. Usually collected in a formal interview that discusses ordinary and extraordinary life stories, Taylor and the five artists capture a specific moment in time in these conversations. It becomes clear that collecting oral history is a necessary reflection for us all, especially those of us with lineages marked with trauma and a profound community presence. Thinking about their early and ancestral lives, each artist can name what helped and hindered their growth. Future generations will be taught how to fight and how to step into the intergenerational internal dialogue; continuing the teachings of older and past generations and offering a new perspective to posterity. There are also practices that must stop - or start - here. Tobi, for instance, challenges the fixed perception of women as mothers, and mothers as omniscient teachers, to see herself as a guide that both gives and receives knowledge in raising her child.
Muttererde is a sustaining mix of Black femme archives and each artists’ family tree; this film brings them together in a way that invites us to ask these questions, and articulate this knowledge, for ourselves and for our future generations.
