Mothers Divine and Acts of Creation

Mary Beth Edelson’s, Zipper Sheela: Stepping Out (1973) appears in ‘Mothers Divine’, the first chapter of Acts of Creation. In ‘Mothers Divine’ I imagine rearranging the displays of a grand museum into motherhood-related departments: the Department of Fertility, of The Mothers Nature, of ‘Other’ Mothers and so on.

Much of my research for Acts of Creation took place at real museums in Europe and the US. The imaginary museum in ‘Mothers Divine’ is based on a game that I’d play with myself, going around each collection, searching for imagery relating to motherhood and pondering what it said about how mothers were seen at different times and in different places.

Zipper Sheela: Stepping Out features in my Department of Fertility. Melding her body with a carving of a Celtic sheela-na-gig, Edelson appears standing naked in the landscape with her arms raised like an ancient goddess figure. She looks powerful, but the image is also funny. Sheela-na-gigs are carved as bald old women contorted into gymnastic positions that allow them to hold their outsized genitals open with their hands.

We can’t know their significance for certain – perhaps they had protective powers, perhaps they warned against sexual indulgence – but they are popularly believed to be fertility figures. Edelson has given herself a sheela’s bald head and turned her entire torso into an outsized vulva fastended with a zipper (which strikes me as a very practical addition – truly, a labour-saving device!)

Edelson was a feminist artist with a deep interest in goddess culture, and Zipper Sheela is part of her Trickster series portraying the feminine divine as a disruptive force. In the series, Edelson calls on a range of divinities and mythic figures, among them Kali, Medusa and Baubo (who lifted her skirts to flash the goddess Demeter to cheer her up when she was mourning her daughter Persephone.)

Most of Acts of Creation is dedicated to depictions of real motherhood, made from first-hand experience, but in the opening chapter I wanted to take a fresh look at all the divine and mythic mothers on display in our museums, and the various ways they have inspired contemporary artists.

‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’ is currently on at Midland Arts Centre (MAC) in Birmingham through 29 September.

Find more information on the touring exhibition.