writing to the void: happy holidays
After Yelena´s first child was stillborn due to health officials not intervening on time, she was pursuing a liability claim. In the end, the family doctor involved, bought Yelena out for 6000 euro without acknowledging her responsibility in Yelena´s daughter´s death. After that, Yelena´s case was closed and her lawyer advised not to pursue liability of the involved obstetric practice. Yelena split the money with her partner and decided to invest her share into books, production of work, merchandise and marketing of her artistic practice. Thus the idea was born to send greeting cards to curators locally and abroad. Yelena printed 135 greeting cards, most of which she sent to Dutch curators. The greeting cards featured handwritten messages that were mostly similar but somewhat customized as Yelena did not know most of the curators personally. The response was very limited, a few people sent her a note through email or social media thanking Yelena for the greeting card, however the interaction ended there. Later, Yelena met one of the curators that she wrote to that recognized her work. The interaction was awkward as Yelena did not remember what she wrote to the curator who was being random, saying things like ¨I get approached all the time but it is impossible to facilitate everyone¨. In other words, the curator had no interest in Yelena´s work despite the event being targeted at artists who are mothers. Of course the challenge of Yelena´s endeavor is not just that gatekeepers only care about what they are interested in, but also the fact that motherhood in art is frowned upon. So far, the interest in the work Yelena created for An Artist Residency in Motherhood has been very limited. The two occasions she was considered for, did not result in exhibitions. Moreover, sharing her intimacy with curators felt like writing to the void…
