(not coming to an institution near you)
THE WINDOW part 71
Who needs to go when your heart just glows
You listen for their heartbeat, ear to partner’s warm stomach, but feel their highland-dancing (or maybe taekwondo) tummy kicks. You catch them and cut the cord and sleep overnight at the hospital. You fall in love with them.
You go out at midnight in a blizzard to buy medicine. You change diapers, wear a babybjorn barely embarrassed. You become hyper-hypervigilant of an allergy, of asphyxiation, of a bite, a burn, a car, a cut, a dog, a disease…
You read them that same bedtime story and never skip a page, even on the jabillionth time. You laugh and laugh, at farts and boogers and tickles and the tinsel that somehow got stuck on their butt.
You rock them to sleep at 2 am when you finish working and get up at 6 am when they awake (you do it oddly on your arm, because you know your collarbone is hard).
You carry and carry them, across the street, at the store, in the studio, in the snow, over the mud, up and down airplane aisles, at the parade, up 3 flights to the loft 4 times a day, crying, laughing, fussing, screaming, singing, sleeping.
You let them paint your nails though you know the Lichtenstein-ish colors will take weeks to wear off. You invent stories from their suggestions — a fish and a whale who are best friends — so you tell the tale of an aging goldfish with a bucket-list wish to see the Bellagio fountains (despite deserts etc.), and how the whale recruits his pals to re-create an even better version of it with their spouts (and flashlights) for her at home. And six stories later they still ask for another.
You work in and around and between all of it, mutate into a maestro of multitasking, become a blackbelt in bitwork, get your PhD in ADHD.
You speed them to school in the stroller in the sun, snow, rain; sprint home, maniacally-work, then dash back again.
You invent games and games and games to occupy them (comic-book exquisite corpse, and spontaneous animal/job charades where both start with the same letter with only one rule: no guessing until you see both performed — no not Snake Surgeon but yes! a Cobra Chiropractor) and you marvel at their minds.
You insist on making them (though grumpy) practice floating and swimming so they don’t die in the lake.
You play hall-ball with them, and dodge-ball (don’t worry about my face), and air-ball (aka Team Balloonia) where the Earth will explode if the balloon hits the ground, and every tap to keep it aloft is different than the last (foot, nose, knee, wrist, left-hand pinkie, twirl…).
On winter days you try (holding hands together) to catch on your tongues snowflakes spiralling down from the sky, then spend hours with them building forts and micro-hills for sledding, and making Saint Phalle-esque snow-sculptures to admire. On a windy spring day you go to the park to improbably catch mid-air those helicopter-seeds that fall from the tall maples, and in the autumn it’s dandelion fluff you all leap to seize.
You go to school performances that run longer than Christian Marclay’s “The Clock”. You played the recorder like a star!
You try not to barf when you see, on the side of their leg, their kneecap that somehow got pushed there after a basketball fall, and try to make them laugh lying on the gym floor until the ambulance arrives. You make them mad. And sad. For things you didn’t intend. You get into a different ambulance another time after the electrical accident on the roof. You sleep beside them at the hospital again.
You relearn math to help them pass. You push back on every single tattoo (as duty not aesthetically). You feign sleep till they come home at 3 am from the parties. You help them float, grumpy, in the ocean of the pandemic. You remain calm teaching them to drive!!! You invent jobs to employ them.
They go. You remember how sweet it was when they used to hold your hand. You fall in love with them again, and again, and again. You catch them and cut the cord (but you don’t).
NOTES:
Institutional exhibitions on motherhood (last 10 years):
“Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” - Hayward Gallery (London, 2024); explored motherhood through self-portraits, addressing creation, caregiving, loss, and women’s health issues like miscarriage and abortion
“Designing Motherhood”- MassArt Art Museum (Boston, 2022); examined the design and material culture of human reproduction, including objects like IUDs, breast pumps, and menstrual cups, highlighting reproductive health’s social and political implications
“Picturing Motherhood Now” Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, 2022); explored motherhood through diverse lenses, addressing themes like family, gender, slavery, migration, and Indigenous matrilineal cultures
“Mothering: Between Stockholm Syndrome and Acts of Production” Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico 2022); this exhibition challenged romanticized views of motherhood, addressing gender equality and the tensions of being an artist-mother
“Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media” Foundling Museum (London, 2020); explored 500 years of pregnancy in art, from drawings to contemporary works
“Mother! Origin of Life!” Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark, 2021); explored motherhood through themes like fertility, sacrifice, and surveillance
“The Great Mother” Palazzo Reale (Milan, 2015) explores the life-giving creative power of mothers and the power denied to and won by women.
Institutional exhibitions on fatherhood (last 75 years):
“The Family of Man”, Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1955); photography exhibition with numerous poignant images of fathers and children portrayed globally
The Window is a 24/7/365/1 photo series by K.I.A. All photos are taken from a single location, and nothing is staged. The images are later arranged in sets as visual poems and narratives, interconnected and nested in a grand continuum, a single portrait of the times:
The Window, as arranged in a continuum:
(for father’s day)
