Mary Kelly. Post-Partum Document

Post-Partum Document by Mary Kelly is the result of a study of the mother-child relationship and was created over six years in the 1970s when the artist was living in London. In this seminal work, Kelly sheds a completely new light on the mother-child motif and the process of documentation that was common in conceptual art at the time. When it was first exhibited at the ICA in London in 1976, the work caused outrage in the tabloid press because stained nappy liners were included in the documentation. The expanded republication of the first edition of Post-Partum Document, which has been published in 1983 and was out of print, and the first German translation of this influential publication enables a renewed examination of this central work.

In the introduction to Post-Partum Document (1973–78) and the six sections that follow, Mary Kelly (born 1941, lives in Los Angeles, US) addresses the relationship between herself as a working mother and her young son. Questions about the emergence of gender difference and female fetishism take center stage. The individual sections document the child’s development up to the age of five and reflect on the process of mutual socialization between mother and child. Small vests, nappy liners, traces of drawing and writing, handprints, as well as plant and insect specimens represent the mother’s memories. But they also represent the way in which she processes the separation from her child. The artist has added diary-like comments and quasi-scientific data to these personal objects. Subjective references and distanced, theoretical approaches in the form of diagrams are juxtaposed. Mary Kelly’s long process of reflection and visualization is now regarded as unique in art history.

Mary Kelly’s critical engagement with psychoanalysis and the application of these insights in consciousness-raising groups, the women’s movement of the 1970s and the artist’s provocative attitude towards conceptual art form the background to this multi-faceted work of art.