Maternal Performance: Relations and Embodiments

In this chapter the authors examine the synchronous relationship between the artform of performance and the maternal. The contribution takes the form of a correspondence between the two authors in order to emphasise the relational, which is crucial to both maternal and performance matters as the performer must relate to their audience or the mother to her other. Additionally, both performance and the maternal privilege the body of the artist or the mother, the body which is making real actions in a specific time and place. It is through performance and live art that mother/artists' maternal bodies are employed as a transgressive site of meaning, allowing a renegotiation of what it is to mother and what is a maternal act. The chapter discusses the work of some of the most transgressive and radical bodily acts of maternal performances (Hannah Ballou, Amanda Coogan, Lynn Lu, Nathalie Angeuzomo Mba Bikoro), which are brought to public consideration through performance art.