This series explores the physiological and sensory experience of parenting, while dipping into structures of identity that are lost, gain and transformed in becoming caregiver to another. My perspective is specifically one of a parent who has carried pregnancies and birthed live children. I explore playing the dichotomy of a body that is autonomous and also intrinsically depended upon. I invite play with the use of my children’s drawings as offering fantastical characters, elements of invited friction, stand in place keepers for mental illness and invisible disability made visible, as well as an opportunity to question societal expectations of parent artists to separate themselves from their role as parent in order to be artist, rather than infiltrating the space of creation.

“Catherine Mellinger transcribes her experiences of birth, lactation and physical caregiving as a parent, and the often conflicting sensory responses being a parent brings about, into beguiling shapes and floating forms.”

From Curator Charlotte Jansen, Site: Brooklyn Gallery Exhibition Faces & Figures, January 2024