Motherhood Mythology
Wisconsin-based artist Tiana Traffas has infinite ways of reimagining themes of motherhood, mythology, and identity. Traffas’ imagery emerges from a bold imagination containing an unbreakable interest in ancient ideas and modern movements. Tiana Traffas makes work which empowers, but even more so empowers vulnerability. There is room to explore and dive deep into emotions and esoteric worlds in the artist’s work. Dive deep with Tiana Traffas and embrace new interpretations and new introductions to motherhood and more.
Part One: Who is Tiana Traffas?
Question #1: Who are you?
I am a self-taught artist and chronic daydreamer. I am nurtured by the earth and her waters, but I forget to go outside more than I would like. I love to dance in my dark basement studio (I’m not good at it but I love it.) I like to find music that makes my jaw drop and my heartache. I’ve always been an avid reader and sometimes it makes me sad to think I’ll never read all the books I want to read before I die. I am a folk herbalist and this basically means I make medicines with backyard weeds. I have been a thrifter/vintage hunter since before it was cool and before I was old enough to drive. I have a healthy bit of distrust with social media/the internet and maybe a smidge of fascination too. I love to learn and travel to new places but I am also quite the homebody. I am a mother to one daughter whose birth was the catalyst for awakened personal power within me.
Question #2: Who are you as an artist?
I create work that thematically explores the taboos of motherhood. The major sources of inspiration for my artwork include taboos, the psychology of motherhood, ancient neolithic and matriarchal goddess cultures, myth, and other sources of esoteric knowledge. The esoteric subjects are wide-ranging but often related, including dreams, animism, and biophilia. I’ve been drawn to symbolism since early childhood and because of this, personal talismans are often present in my artworks. Menstruation, breastfeeding, birth, life cycles, shame, pain, anxiety, joy, love, death, and ancestors are just some of the things explored through a feminist matricentric lens. My goal is to share the love, pain, and vulnerability of motherhood, to highlight what goes unseen, and to weave these personal experiences with collective and arcane symbolism.
Question #3: What do you think about while creating?
I mostly try not to think! I try to get into this creative, intuitive state that I call the “flow state.” It’s not always there for me when I want it to be and that’s when it’s a struggle to create. But when I find myself immersed in that state, it feels so good, effortless, and fluid.
Question #4: What is something you wish someone had told you at some point in your life?
I was going to say “Do whatever the fuck you want” but if I had been given permission, doing whatever the fuck I wanted wouldn’t have been so juicy!
Question #5: Why do you need art your life?
I just do! Do you know when something is so ingrained for you that it becomes difficult to explain? Like when a young child asks what a word means and you use it all the time, know what it means, and are comfortable with it, it’s so obvious to you, so much so that the explanation becomes challenging? That’s what answering this question is like. If you’re an artist I think even if you have only mud and a stick you would find a way to make art from that because making is so necessary for your wellbeing. That’s what it is for me anyway, a necessity.
Question #6: Is your artwork for yourself or for others?
My artwork is first for myself, there is just something that needs to get out. When it’s finished, I sit with it and there is really never the intention to share. But as the work sits, usually on a table in the middle of my studio or hanging above my workspace, something in me shifts, or my relationship to the piece shifts, the desire to share creeps up, and then I do. It’s very intuitive. But many works are just for me, and won’t be formally shared. (or so I think!) Ultimately art is a visual form of communication. I make work that I would like to see, art that speaks to my experiences and forces a light on unnecessary taboos and exposes a collectively felt emotion that feels personal. The art I enjoy the most gives me the feeling of exposed truth, it may not be comfortable or always beautiful, but it reveals!
Question #7: What is your escape?
My own mind, my imagination, my day dreams and visualizations. I can always find solace in and escape through daydreams. This ability translates very easily into the art-making, which could be seen as a form of escape too.
How would you describe your work and practice?
I am currently working on a series I have entitled “Arcana Ma” meaning “mysteries of motherhood.” These works on paper touch on the complicated emotions that motherhood in a patriarchal society brings up and address motherhood as an institution. Often, the subject matter of motherhood is rejected and dismissed from art institutions. My work on motherhood is often dismissed too. I find this dismissal odd and offensive. Artistic depictions (often by male artists) of the mother-child relationship, though few and far between, are created through a palatable lens that reinforces the nurturing empty vessel that the culture wants to see mothers fulfill. Artists have depicted their own internal/external experiences since the beginning of art, but when women who are mothers do the same they are met with patriarchal dismissiveness, censored, and stigmatization. This institution of motherhood is one that I have, at many times, struggled with. Being an independent thinker, feminist, an artist, and a bit of a free spirit I have often defied authority and contended with institutions. The institution of motherhood erases the identity of the mother. In a patriarchal society, this erasure is upheld to keep women disempowered and the wheels turning. It is feminist to take on motherhood as an institution supported by the patriarchy, but it is not feminist to devalue the work done in domestic spaces by mothers. The fight against this cultural erasure of my identity is at the center for me in these paintings.
I think to myself “I am not enough…” How many mothers think this after a long day of struggling to do their best for their well-loved children?
My young daughter needs me. She needs me to be present with her. I am sinking deeper into my depression in the darkness of winter and the seemingly endless seasons of a pandemic. I am isolated and lonely, yet I can never be alone. The mental exhaustion is crippling and I’m tired of performing invisible labor. The years of unrecognised, unappreciated and not enough are weighing me down. My inner psyche is dark and foggy and muddy. I am trapped by my own mind, sinking into despair. She holds my face to try and bring me back. It’s all so heavy and I’m trying so hard. I remind myself that it ebbs and flows. I’ll try to be more gentle with myself.
This piece speaks to the duality of touch within motherhood, it can be so overwhelming one moment and in the next, it can be one of the most healing and incredible parts of parenting. I am overwhelmed with love for my child yet, the institution of motherhood can hang heavy over me. As a new mother, I wondered when, if ever, I would have my body to myself again- especially during the extended breastfeeding years. I was navigating a sense of loss and a struggle for my own identity. As a stay-at-home mother, I feel deeply the effects of my isolation even when struggling for moments of solitude. Tea, acrylic, thread, and parchment baking paper were used to represent the feeling of being submerged in, yet at odds with, domestic life, the isolation of motherhood, and the intense demands of the mother-child relationship.
The title of this piece says it all. I feel like I am suffocating under the constant demands of my daughter and the feelings of guilt that consume me. I am overwelmed, emotionally drained and sometimes apathetic or detached. As a mother, I’ve internalized a culture that demands I bear the brunt of caregiving while it simultaneously devalues my job. The ongoing pandemic has pushed mothers more firmly into domestic spaces and the invisible and emotional labor has become an even heavier burden.
| Where/ How can Vacant Museum viewers see more of your work and where can they purchase it? |
| Please visit my website! Tianatraffas.bigcartel.com I have a small shop, galleries, a blog, and more. If you sign up for my email newsletter you’ll get special coupon codes and occasional updates. |