A grandmother and her granddaughter baking together at a kitchen table in warm afternoon light

WAX-BUILT CASTLES

Chantal Spapens

WAX-BUILT CASTLES

DURATION:
40' 23''
DESCRIPTION

“How am I to protect my wax-built castles of love From the devouring heat of your fires?” Sayat Nova In the tradition of Louise Bourgeois’ “Femme-Maison”, the utopian/dystopian atmosphere of the domestic is reconstituted. Black wax-built forms like houses floating in the air that the artist melts down, uncovering their skeletons one by one, leaving behind a floating graveyard of the houses she once built. As Alva Gotby argues in her book “They call it Love: the politics of Emotional Life”, in a capitalistic society, reproductive and emotional labor is celebrated through the image of the self-sacrificing mother-wife and through a narrative solely devoted to love, where happiness and self-fulfillment overlay with conjugal romance, a stable and fertile household, and a crowd of well-behaved children. In practice, these ideals turn out mostly as a zero-sum game with women on the losing end. To change the way we relate to each other will require revolt and a radical restructuring of society.

CREDITS

Video credits: Christian Quatela, Audio credits: Christian Quatela, Curated/produced by: Victoria Frohberg & Vittorio Venturoli

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An older woman resting in warm sunlight
Chantal Spapens

Chantal Spapens is a visual artist who works in performance, sculpture, installation and painting.

Chantal Spapens