Monsterland (2023) is a video made in response to a key question motivating my practice-based PhD project: what does it mean to mother in an age of ecological crisis? How is the Anthropocene shaping motherhood, and how is motherhood shaping the landscapes of the Anthropocene? For if the Anthropocene is an era defined by humans becoming a geological force throughout the world, and the womb is our first environment, we might also think of maternal agency as a generative force within this unfolding and uncertain terrain, entangled in the complexities that constitute these new – albeit potentially unhealthy and unsustainable – ecologies. The video merges the plastic world of ‘softplay’ – children’s indoor recreational spaces – with the trauma-layered landscape of post-industrial West Yorkshire, converging ideas and ways of dwelling and nurturing in the Anthropocene.
Monsterland was included in the Maternal Stratum exhibition.
A short essay about the video can be read here in the CEPRA Journal
