Haunted Milk, 2019, two channeled video work (ongoing)
A description of 18th Century feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft nursing a puppy at each breast, a then accustomed remedy for birth related infections, triggered the beginning of this work. A few days after giving birth, Wollstonecraft died of childbed fever, leaving her baby Mary Shelley motherless. Mary Shelley is breastfed by an English wet nurse, because the family could afford it. Before infant formula (based on cow milk) and bottles were introduced to the market, and before better hygiene was implemented in the late 19th century, wet nurses played a crucial role in the survival of motherless infants.
At the age of 18, Shelley began to write the novel Frankenstein about a nameless monster born without a childhood or mother figure.
In the ongoing work ‘Haunted Milk’ the hands of Frankenstein’s monster shuffle silently through image material on motherhood, milk, breast feeding. He, as a character, may never have existed if Shelley hadn't been fed with another mother's milk.
(See note and list of material sources below)
Note: ’Haunted Milk’ is not a document of the history of wet nursing, it is a brief, silent, fragmented encounter with the concept of wet nursing, touching upon different historical records and reflecting on the milk industry as remarkably detached from the idea of nursing and care. I am acutely aware of the colonial history of wet nursing and I began by addressing this history in ‘Haunted Milk’, but upon reconsideration, I find that the matter of wet nursing in the European colonies demands another format, with another support structure, to be cared for acceptably. It is important and sore work that I believe needs an unfolding by or in collaboration with artists in other positions, with another background and relationship to this particular colonial history. A process that I, as a white woman, wish to support in whichever manner I can. I would am interested in thorough collaborations on this subject matter, as a way to understand the different positions we are mothering from.