12 minutes of footage from a documented performance.
Fake Grass, Edited field backdrop, vase, lube, basket, flowers, pearl earrings and necklace, kitten heels.
The artist in this performance inserts real flowers into her body in three different ways.
Having not known why she had a fixation on the Stepford wife, Mavroleon realized that because of her upbringing from her mother and grandmother her ideas of femininity had been skewed. Her mother and grandmother not being feminists made her more aware of her physical appearance, women were in relation to men. Mavroleon acknowledged for the first time that there was a part of her that liked the Stepford wife and that’s why she was drawn to it, it was what she was told should almost be her goal. On the other hand she unbearably hates what the Stepford wife is and stands for. Her unconscious might drift towards her starting point but her conscious pulls her back to what she truly believes today. It’s her fighting with how she’s been programmed and who she is as a woman today, she immortalizes this inner conflict in Maternal Masochism where she plays with the idea of pleasure and pain. The performance becomes therapeutic, almost a space where she is able to sacrifice the Stepford Wife inside her by acknowledging it’s presence.
Video piece (looping) and sculpture in conversation.
Flowers submerged in concrete bricks.
Vacuum Formed plastic, Pink Glitter, Plexiglass.
By Vacuum forming a bouquet of flowers, this skeletal imprint is created. Unlike in other renditions where the flowers remain contained by the plastic, here they are torn out and filled with Pink Glitter, emphasizing the form of the mold. This indistinct shape seems bodily, or fossilized. The bouquet/flowers are at the core of inspiration and the ideas towards the views on femininity the artist tries to unravel. Therefore this pink glittery imprint of a flower is what serves as the backbone to a lot of her concepts on the feminine ideal.
Vacuum formed real flowers, adhesive, fishing wire
The artist questions the care and love of a mother, in particular. Does their love and preservation ultimately suffocate and trap us in our skin. The flower is also symbolic of a specific memory as it is the image of gift giving for certain reasons, and this is the prolonging of that memory, trying to hold on to something that can never be, just like a child coming of age.
Included Below are photos of Mommy Dearest in Braw Haus Presents: NYC Spring Blossom. 393 Gallery on Broadway, NYC. May 2019.
Sheet metal cut into dress patterns. Layered with photo transfers of girls and women of the past. A homage to the women of a time with predominantly unpaid labour and no recognition for the work they did. Contradicting the packet of the patterns with a highly idealized female on the front the metal in these three works acts as armor.
Plywood, wood glue, Photo mapping projection.
In response to her father, who tends to hoard, he has hoarded their family home, which only he still inhabits. Thinking about control and routine, her father’s routine or her idea of it is mapped out in the exact replica of her childhood home, through videos/images of each room turning on or off according to his routine of movement, This creates a facade of life and surveillance. It is a way of falsely looking over her father through an almost prosthetic of care. It also brings to life the memories of childhood and the happier time in her life. It is on repeat and traps the sense of life of her father in the model, nodding to this angst of trying to hold on to something, up keep it, and live in the past.
Wooden table, chairs, fabric napkins and table settings, silverware, silver tray, China plates, various animal themed porcelain objects, bread basket, silver wine jug, candles, chicken, jello, soup, cherry pie, real flowers sprayed with varnish.
During this performance the artist serves dinner to four chosen participants from the audience. Duration: 40 minutes.
This is an experiment of control. Through small, manipulations the artist makes the participants change their body language and behavior subconsciously. The performance is focused around analyzing the way one can discreetly change another’s behavior through the environment.
A 2 minute performance.
Kitchen tiles, silver bucket of water, shredded family photo, tape, string, wooden pole, lathed wooden tip, blouse, pink dress, kitten heels.
Taking back control over the stereotype that is a ‘house-wife’, the artist uses her idealized family portrait to mop the floors, which ultimately makes them dirtier and is destroyed within 2 minutes. By doing the act of cleaning which is associated to the task of a ‘good’ wife more mess is eventually created and the portrait is destroyed, and the tiles crack underneath her suggesting the inevitable outcome of these stereotypes and unjust pressures of the unpaid labour and the falsity of the idealization.
A test film on Bolex 16mm.
A self portrait constructed through using what was vacuumed from the artist’s apartment, having not been vacuumed all year. Molded into the floor plan of the apartment unit.
