But What Does it Feel Like in the Body?

Exploring the transition from a literal depiction to the felt.

I've recently been drawn to explore the burdens carried by mothers—the physical weight of carrying children, whether in the womb or on the hip; the invisible load of endless worries and fears; the relentless cycle of daily tasks. For me, these burdens manifest physically in my body: tense shoulders, a tight back, a knotted spine.

As I often do, I approached this theme literally at first. I began with the idea of depicting a human figure with a burden on their back. I also created a rough sketch exploring how I sometimes feel like an octopus—multiple arms emanating from the marrow of my spine, reaching in all directions to help, to hold, to do. For this particular sketch, I inked my own body with paint and printed it directly onto paper. But I wasn't satisfied with either of these images.

Then something unexpected happened. I had excess paint still on my body, so I grabbed a second piece of paper and began printing each section separately. The result was this piece—body parts brought together by a red joint serving as a spine. I titled it Mother's Backbone.

In the end, it was much more powerful for me to trust the idea that the body keeps score and let the underlying truth emerge through the process itself, rather than force a predetermined image.