Return of the Triumphal Mother Dani & Sheilah ReStack
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In The gallery
〰️ In The gallery
Return of the Triumphal Mother
Visible Records is pleased to present Return of the Triumphal Mother by Dani and Sheilah ReStack. This new work, made specifically for Visible Records, continues their imagining of queer family, desire, relationship and fantasy. In their newest projection installation the viewer is invited into an image and constructed set for the shared meal with members of the ReStack family. At the table there is a teenager and an older woman who is bent over with her hand outstretched towards the ground. Food sits obedient while objects, colors clutter the ground. A spill occurs.
What is wrong with this woman who is responsible for the family? Why is she dripping and folded while her children carry on with their meal; oblivious?
She is a ghost.
She is the imagined self -- hovering right over the actual self. (It is the image that is actually happening underneath the one that you see. )
She is my hero, she is my mother who refuses and I love her for it.
She is not afraid to admit that she is no more than the shape of the surface of the table as it meets the ground.
She won’t make sense as a mother.
She is not triumphant, but triumphal – she is an adjective to describe the way in which you do. Like heroic type of domestic labor, like Medusa with a sword for a ladle.
Perhaps the question is not what is wrong with the woman -- but how does this scene invite curiosity after the initial recoil? What is the toll of being a visual contradiction of what heteronormative and ‘correct’ family looks like? It has always been the work of queers to make alternative family. We needed to for survival. In this installation the ReStack’s are literally creating fragments and forms to hold an image of what a queer family could be – it isn’t a moral compass it is just the act of holding on to holding each other as parents, as partners, as friends, as lovers
In the words of adrienne maree brown in an interview with Amy Ray;
I know how to hold on and not let go. I know how to hold on and have good conflict with you, because we’re family. We’re staying, bitch.
Here’s an image that is shattered and broken into pieces and put back together, to prove it.
