Milk Diaries 2020
It almost feels like I have spent the past two years in isolation. I’ve been consistently trying to navigate my artistic practice through intense waves of grief over the loss of my mum, infertility/miscarriage, and a fear of mortality and dying. Things have shifted in the last 4 months, with added postpartum anxieties, healing associated with childbirth, obsessive tracking of my baby’s feeds, breastfeeding struggles and COVID 19. With the COVID pandemic, there has been increased anxieties surrounding my newborns health in a time like this. Will Edie be okay? What if she gets sick? What about her check-ups? How do I protect her? Am I feeding her enough? what if my milk dries up and I can’t feed her? What if I get sick, who will feed her? Money? where will it come from? Am I spending adequate time with my other daughter? What if she gets sick? How am I supposed to help her with homeschooling? How will I maintain a studio practice?
As a way to ease my anxieties, I started pumping breast milk. I pump at 5:00 every morning after our first feed. I began photographing the bags of breastmilk as a way to document life postpartum, anxieties about mumhood and life in COVID19. The act of pumping breastmilk and freezing it has been a way for me to cope and has eased anxieties around getting sick and not being able to feed my baby.
Postpartum anxieties are exacerbated by the times we are living in.
The Scene 2021 at the Art Gallery of Alberta Curated by Lindsey Sharman and Danielle Siemens