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Toni Pepe
Bedroom Windows, 2020
Estimated Value: $1,000

Archival inkjet print
18 x 25 inches
Unframed
Edition 1/5
Signed, on label
Donated by the artist.

“My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.”
– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born.

Historically, motherhood has been viewed as a role rather than a relationship. It is a pre-scripted character that a woman is supposed to slip into, quietly abandoning her previous self for a self-sacrificing, silent, and unconditionally loving figurehead. One of the most complicated and layered of human experiences reduced to an archetype, leaving little room for the flesh and blood mother to have authorship over any feelings that may stray from the ideal.

I am interested in the form of motherhood – the materials and substances that comprise this experience. Many of the interactions that make up motherhood are ephemeral – consumed by time, the body, and the environment. Repetitive tasks and touches that create a framework for familial time – the meals, baths, haircuts, lost teeth, laundry, conversations, embraces, and unspoken exchanges that amass over a lifetime, yet evaporate almost as soon as they occur.

I began exploring motherhood in my work shortly after giving birth to my son in 2012. While the impetus for this work derives from my personal experience as a new mother, the pieces are also embroiled in the wider myth and fantasy of motherhood itself.

 
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About the Artist:
Toni Pepe

Toni Pepe is chair and assistant professor of photography at Boston University. She received her MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an MLA in visual culture from Boston University. Her photographs and installation work explore the construction of identity, specifically the icon of the mother. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including the Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Wege durch das Land, Music & Literary Festival. Pepe was a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, a Critical Mass top 50, a Review Santa Fe 100, and was most recently awarded an Artist Trust Grant. Her work is in the permanent collections at the Danforth Art Museum, the Magenta Foundation, as well as many private collections.

Website: tonipepe.com
Instagram: @toni.pepe