ARTIST STATEMENT
In My Mother’s Dimple is a short filmed performance that explores the potential for separate metaphorical archives held within the bodies of a mother and child, recording something of the other and reflected in their face, mind, and actions. It examines what such an archive could contain and how each might use it as both a holding place of, and a site of exploration for, their individual identities. As part of the auto-theoretical tradition, this film considers the theories of Jerome Bruner on the formation of the self, of Rozsika Parker on maternal ambivalence, Lucy Jones on matrescence, and Astrida Neimanis on hydrofeminism. How are these theories lived through the bodies of a mother and child and what might they tell us about how we understand ourselves through the gaze of those we love? This film is positioned at the intersection of academic theory, filmmaking, visual contemporary art, memoir, and the body as material.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nelson (she/her) is a conceptual artist working across visual and textual mediums, based in London. At the core of Nelson’s practice is storytelling and the murkiness of the “truth” of one’s recollections. Her practice embodies radical vulnerability through a combination of object, text and film, but always with the visible presence of the artist’s hand at work as a performative enactment of her subjectivity. Nelson’s work, therefore, often plays with the mess, leakage, and imperfections innate in the human experience. Nelson considers her work part of the auto-ethnographic and auto-theoretical traditions – she uses episodes from her own story as the source of her work, believing it will yield insights about broader contemporary culture. She invites the audience to use the visual interpretations of her experiences as a springboard to explore their own.
All of Nelson’s major works have a visual and textual component which work together and on their own. The visual element gives space for immediate relationality with the audience and the textual is more cognitively focused, providing background and depth to the work. Nelson’s work has been exhibited internationally, including a 2023 screening of her short film “He.., I…” at a Tate Late event at Tate Modern, the broadcasting of a sound piece on “Montez Press Radio”, and inclusion in physical and digital exhibitions held by “Woman Made Gallery” in Chicago. Nelson has work in the “Procreate Project Archive” and won the Batsford Prize Fine Art Category in 2022.
© Nelson